Sunday Times Secondary School list - no London Oratory?

[Letsgetreal]

Am I missing something obvious here but I couldn't see The London Oratory on the Sunday Times best secondary schools list last weekend - either in the paper or online.

Am I being stupid or is it really not there? If so is there a reason does anyone know.......

HoleyJoe

This is a London centric question where parents are "spoilt" for choice amongst comps, faith schools, single sex/co-ed, grammars and private schools. I'm not sure that all this competition ensures quality for all, but it does mean there is plenty of discussion.

My guess is most parents in the UK don't have much choice and so the quality of their local school is paramount. How this quality is achieved should be what the Education ministers address head on. That said, I bet teachers are fed up with meddling and budget cuts ....

Actually a lot of parents in London have no choice of school place , at primary or secondary, there were more applicants than secondary places in our borough last year and next year will be worse. The Free School approved to provide the places could not open last year because it had no site and it still hasn't announced a site for this year. It is something that is acknowledged pretty much from birth that if you live in a black hole of provision you will have to move, go private, take your chances with the ££££ tutoring industry to sit with the other 2 or 3 thousand applicants for 150 Grammar School places ,sit in a pew, or get very creative in finding a school out of borough, or even across London

The admissions criteria for LO are so stringent that parents have to be planning pretty much from birth, early baptism, church attendance, active participation in Parish activities. The adjudicator excluded some of the activities required like cleaning, but not all. So one years exams results are not going to cancel out all those years of conforming to the criteria.

I would imagine a parent who had been through all that would want to see the school in a list of "best schools" to confirm their illusions of superiority and priviledge

I agree: pressure on school places and tiny catchments remove any semblance of choice in most areas of London - which is why extreme religious observance and / or years of mad tutoring followed by a long commute to a super-selective (and often to avoid a perfectly reasonable comp - London schools perform better than anywhere else in the country, on average) is so tempting to some.

And that creates endless discussion.

Makes sense to want to see your efforts justified.

Oratory has historically had results that are simply incompatible with a genuinely comprehensive intake. It could well be that the fact that they've had to amend their admissions system to make it closer to the comprehensive model that it is supposed to be has had an effect on results.