Dame Alice Owen - for Islington kids

[CruCru]

Hi all

Do any of you know much about this school? I hadn't heard of it but apparently my MP's children go there and, although they are based in Hertfordshire, they reserve some 20 odd places for Islington children.

Thanks!

[farewelltoarms]

Thanks Gregor for a really thoughtful and rational post (and so much around school choices has neither of these qualities).

I think part of the problem is that the non-selective inner-city schools can have a larger proportion of the children than they should have who find it harder to behave/achieve. By the time you skim off via the privates, the small remaining amount of super-selectives, the faith schools, the music aptitude places etc, then this group becomes more dominant. I have no problem with my children being educated in a school with kids who have difficult backgrounds or challenges, I just resent the fact that other people are avoiding them all together and as a consequence some schools are having far more than their fair share.

And I totally realise that by considering privates, I'm contributing to this problem. I just look at my eldest's peers at primary - the ones who are most like him - and they're not going to the local school for secondary but are being flung around various other schools and sectors.

[farewelltoarms]

ps I might print out your post and get it laminated!

[GregorSamsa]

I'm not sure I really agree with the notion that most non-selective schools have 'more than their fair share' of disruptive pupils. I think that is more likely to be true for schools that are generally undersubscribed, but most sought-after nonselective schools will have an intake that pretty much represents the population who want to attend that school.

I think there is a fear-based perception that the presence of children who are not white, middle-class and high-achieving (which, let's face it, is really what people mean when they talk about this kind of cohort) will adversely affect the achievement and overall educational experience of dc who do fall into taht category. But assuming the school is well-managed that absolutely should not be the case. The nightmare scenario is of disruptive children running riot preventing other children from learning and pulling the general academic level to the lowest common denominator. That may have been the case 30 years ago, but no school today would get away with letting that happen. Schools have very detailed target setting for individual pupils and have to track progress very carefully, and manage the learning of different groups, whether by setting or by in-class differentiation. The classroom anarchy scenario is really not one that represents what is going on in inner-ciity schools now.

I must declare an interest, inasmuch as we had a naturally academic high-achieving dc1 who could have got us the DAO dream ticket sibling entry for all the dc. We decided not to go that route because I had reservations about the journey, and also about things I had heard anecdotally about pastoral care and academic pressure in the selective environment. With hindsight, I have no regrets about that decision: high-achiving dc1 did as well as he could have done anywhere; able but not quite so stellar dc2 is predicted A* and A for GCSE, and sees herself as a high-achiever rather than an average-low achiever which she might be in a more competitive school; reasonably bright but very bonkers dc3 I think would not have flourished in an environment that would have highlighted the things she found hard rather than her strenghts. DC2 has several contemporaries from primary who did go the DAO route, either as siblings or just scraping in from the waiting list - none of them are doing significantly better academically than dc2, and I think are possibly less engaged and positive about their school experience than my dc2.

It probably helped us that my dc were at primaries where private or selective school entry was a vanishingly small minority. But there is definitely a critical mass thing, and most of the Islington secondaries that are doing well with a mixed intake absolutely do have children who are able and ambitious, and do well by them. So there is really no reason to assume that any other dc with those abilities and ambitions cannot do just as well in a non-selective local school as they would elsewhere, and possibly have more fun and less pressure in the process.

[MN164]

I think part of the issue is that the track record with high attainers is yet to be proven. There are increasing numbers of high attainers doing well at Islington secondaries, but it's a small number given the high attainers in the borough that go off to grammars, selective faiths and private (think DAO, Latymer, QE Boys, Henrietta Barnet, The Oratory, Cardinal Vaughan, Highgate, UCS, South Hampstead, Forest, etc etc).

The competition have a solid track record and are a "low risk" choice requiring no "belief" in the future of a fast improving secondary like Highbury Grove.

[GregorSamsa]

I think the track record is there, but the numbers are relatively small overall compared with the selective schools (unsurprisingly, given the proportions in the intake overall). And yes, I would include CVMS and the Oratory as well as DAO etc in with selective schools - there is no way on earth their intake is proportionate to the local area or to the other schools they're being compared with.

People are still falling into the trap of looking at the headline figure of dc achieving a particular benchmark, be it 5 A-C grades or all A/A grades, and equating that to the probability of their dc achieving those grades. Which is of course not what the statistics tell you at all.

Honestly, the number of people who've said to me in the course of secondary transfer conversations, "Well actually we preferred school A (the school my dc3 goes to) but School B is better, so we went for that even though we didn't like it as much." The difference is something like 64% A-C vs 70% ditto. But the difference between those outcomes is lower than the relative proportions of high-middle-low attainers across the two schools in the DFE stats, which means that, purely on stats, School A is doing better for their pupils relative to prior attainment. But people don't see that, they just think, "OMG, my child has a 36% chance of not getting 5A-C if I send them to school A". Even though that is complete nonsense.

[MN164]

GregorSamsa

The stats on high attainers are there to be found (grade, value add, etc), but that doesn't mean parents will find them. I haven't found a state school yet that highlights them on an open day or website.

I did go to our local and suggest that they more clearly communicate the desire to attract the bright students from the area and their ability to get the best out of them. Much of their work is "buried" in the stats, even when you do find them.

They have a full class cohort of "high attainers". I think that means any child with more than level 4s leaving primary (please confirm MNers). However, the average GCSE grade for that cohort is a B. The low attainers average was a C. There is a lot to be read into this but ultimately it's useless information for any parents and their child.

The ability for the teachers to push each student to their highest potential is the key and I haven't had a convincing story from the teachers about that at any state comp yet. The response is more along the lines of "the desire is there to teach, but the targets are distracting and the time and resources don't allow sufficient differentiation."

Whilst the schools headline stats rocket upwards there isn't much impetus or resource to get the last 5% of "bright" kids in and away from selective schools.

[GregorSamsa]

The ability for the teachers to push each student to their highest potential is the key and I haven't had a convincing story from the teachers about that at any state comp yet. The response is more along the lines of "the desire is there to teach, but the targets are distracting and the time and resources don't allow sufficient differentiation."

I agree that heads are probably not communicating effectively enough what they do with high achievers.

But the line about not pushing students to their highest potential is not my experience - we've attended loads of parents evenings that have featured conversations along the lines of, 'we're expecting him to get A*/Level XYZ, and we look at each assessment grade along the way, so if he's starting to slip then this is the action we'll take/interventions we'll offer'.

[farewelltoarms]

Thanks again for all this, you're going a fair bit of the way to persuade me Gregor and I'm really grateful (because deep down my rational side knows you're right).

I would disagree, though, with your assertion that non-selective schools don't have more than their fair share of potentially difficult-to-reach pupils. Where you've got selection of any sort, you'll skim of some of the brighter ones, some from more motivated families etc which will inevitably lead to the proportions in the schools remaining being skewed. You yourself write that CVMS and the Oratory have very few low attainers/FSM and therefore their surrounding schools have much higher percentages (thankfully faith schools is not such an issue in Islington).

Where I live, for example, very few homeowners go to the local state primary which means that despite it being an area with very expensive housing and a lot of high earners, the primary is over half FSM (many of whom are v v bright and not in any way disruptive I hasten to add).

Of the 'posher' pupils in the school, there's a high proportion who didn't get into any of the private preps and pre-preps or have been managed out. Therefore they too are not representative of the wealthier children round here.

Does it matter? I don't know, I just think that my own (possibly groundless and misplaced) nerves about secondary would be alleviated if the secondaries looked a bit more like the Islington that I live in.

[MN164]

There is also a tendency on this forum for posters to be talking about "high potential" children, simultaneously gushing over their own children's brilliance whilst claiming that "normal" schools just wouldn't cut it .....

(guilty as charged)

For many parents, whatever the "potential" of their children, academic selection is simply not important. There is not a right or wrong on that point. I suspect that we would all want to avoid a school that has poor teaching and attainment, a suspect ethos or a questionable environment where there is a risk of not feeling safe, happy and healthy.

[GregorSamsa]

Depends what you mean by 'fair share', I guess - relative to similar schools? To the local population? Compared with selective schools?

You'd have to mine down into the DFES data to get the exact stats, and probably Islington's schools will have higher proportions of FSM and other deprivation indicators than sought-after schools in other boroughs with more established traditions of being 'sought-after'. Also bear in mind that at some rapidly-improving schools the intake at the lower end will have changed from the cohort at the upper end on which the exam results statistics are based.

But I would dispute whether those statistics on their own have any value in terms of predicting what an individual child's experience of a particular school will be, or what their outcome will be in terms of academic achievement. It all depends on how the school is organised and managed - you'd need to go to open days really, and talk to Y10 and Y11 kids to get more of a feel for whether a particular school would be likely to suit your child. Some schools will have PTA parents present at open evenings as well, which is a good way to meet people who are coming out the other side of the experience. Or try to get your primary school to organise a meettheparents.info/meet-the-parents-latest/ Meet the Parents event, to try and get some first-hand experiences.

The whole landscape of Islington and Hackney schools has changed so dramatically since my eldest did secondary transfer, and people are looking at local schools in a different way, so there is a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. Of course white m/c families are not in the majority, and clearly people who want their children to be educated in the kind of environment where they will be protected from contact with children who are not from the same background as them are never going to want to sign up at the Islington secondary schools window. And yes, there are Islington schools that I wouldn't be particularly keen to send my child to because I'm not convinced that there's enough of a mix for them to find a peer group that will help see them successfully through adolescence or achieve their best academically.

But having seen my dc's various cohorts go through these and similar schools, enjoy their school years, have solid supportive friendship groups and come out with grades that are as good as they could have hoped for anywhere, there is no reason to assume that other dc cannot do the same.

[MN164]

Good link and a great initiative.

As an aside - Yerbury Primary. Lovely school, lovely families, and a catchment area that ends almost inside the school gates!

[GregorSamsa]

Yes, obviously the initiative had to start at Yerbury. Snurk. Which is a lovely school, but essentially also a free private primary for the Islington m/c. There are loads of other fab primary schools with a demographic that is somewhat more (ahem) representative of inner London - and none the worse for that.

But to listen to some people talk you'd think there were three just-about-acceptable primary schools in the whole of Islington and all the others were turning out juvenile delinquent ritalin-addicts. Suffice it to say, there are lots of delightful children who made it through less sought-after primaries (and secondaries) and got into (gasp) Russell Group universities to do proper subjects. And are possibly more self-reliant and self-confident as a result of their wider experience.

[Qosaclan1]

Hello - I would really appreciate some advice if possible. My daughter is musical and showing great promise at the piano (age 9 yrs grade 4) and she also plays the saxophone. I am considering entering her for the Dame Alice Owens music exam, but I understand there are only 10 places offered. Does anyone know how good a child needs to be to get through? I wouldn't say my daughter is a prodigy and has to be made to practice, but she does have a natural flair for music. Does anyone have any experience of these exams or know of anyone who has got through, so I can try to assess her chances? Many thanks.

[thankgoditsover]

No child sharing my DNA is in danger of having any musical aptitude so this is heresay...

From what I gather, natural aptitude really comes into it. You have to pass a musical aptitude test that people try to prepare for (and I'm sure there's stuff you can do, in the same way that the 'untutorable' reasoning tests can also be prepped for) but ultimately it depends on a certain level of natural ability.

A certain percentage of applicants get through this stage and then audition on an instrument. I don't know any DAO successes but plenty of ones for Camden and Marylebone. They're all talented but not exceptional. Singing ability seems to be prized, perhaps because it seems rawer than, say, violin.

[Qosaclan1]

Thank you thankgoditsover for the quick response, every bit of information gathered really helps; this whole secondary school business is a minefield, I think one needs to go and sit a degree in how to work through it all! So thanks again, much appreciated.

[Moominmammacat]

There's certainly no harm in trying because if you do get in the orchestras there are wonderful. One of my three applied with 2 x Grade 5 distinction at 9 and a Grade 4 ... and didn't get a music place, which I thought he would walk, but got an academic one. One person in his year got in with Grade 2 clarinet. Certainly no rhyme or reason so far as I can see but if I were them I would go for the rare instruments. Good luck anyway but don't put all eggs in one basket!

[Qosaclan1]

Thank you Moominmammacat very helpful;we will probably have a go at the Dame Alice Owens academic test as well. I will also do my research on other possibilities, as completely take your point re putting all eggs in one basket. We live near to Cuffley, so not a great choice in terms of secondary schools in general especially with good music departments. A move might be on the cards ..... thanks again!

[Cretaceous]

Moominmammacat That's a bit strange for someone to get in with only Grade 2 clarinet. It makes you wonder whether these schools are able to use the subjective music exams to admit someone who "knows the right people". Your musical child should surely have got in ahead of the clarinetist, as they sound very gifted.

Good luck, Qosacian1.

[Moominmammacat]

Who knows? Personally, I think music places are a bit of a mixed blessing as school can make more demands on you than if you have an academic place. It all turned out for the best but I was jolly peeved at the time.

[Qosaclan1]

Moominmammacat glad it all worked out well for you in the end. When you say that the school can make more demands on you with a music place, what would they be? Thanks.

[Moominmammacat]

I'm not speaking from experience as mine didn't have one but I get the feeling that in many schools you can be asked to do more than you want to do. If you play say, tuba, and you're in first band you might be asked to play in second band too just because you are needed not because you want to do it. You won't have that problem with piano and Sax though! I think Chancellors has music places but I've no idea what music is like at the school.

[Qosaclan1]

Once again thank you so much for the quick response Moominmammacat, it is really wonderful that there are people out there that take the time to respond to these questions. We did think of Chancellors, but I don't think it has the best reputation academically and as well as being musical, my daughter is quite academic, although not off the scale! Will keep all options open though. Thanks again.

[Moominmammacat]

Yes indeed. Are you just looking at state?

[Qosaclan1]

Ideally yes, as it would be a big stretch for us to go private, but I am not ruling private out completely.We haven't started visiting schools yet, I plan to start after Easter, I think that will help with the decision; I've been told you get a 'feel' for the school and what's right for your child? The choice of state secondaries is poor....

[CruCru]

Visiting schools is turning out to be quite a weird experience - they are surprisingly different from each other so it is definitely worth a visit.