League tables- bullshit?

[3amEternal]

Just musing on all the results boasting going on by all the local schools in the local rag and on Facebook. The league tables will be published this week. League tables were really low down on the list of reasons we had for selecting a school. Sure it's important to see the exam results but the league tables offer no context to the entry criteria for their pupils. Of course highly selective schools both state and independent (some who aggressively weed out at various points) are going to be higher in the league tables. Doesn't necessarily reflect the teaching or pastoral care. When we were looking around last year I was surprised at how many parents were league table obsessed above everything else. DD sat for independents and many of the families on offer days hadn't even bothered to visit until then! I was sceptical about the pastoral care of schools that aggressively maintain their league table positions by weeding out children that they themselves thought good enough a few years ago. Thoughts?

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/08/26/gcse-results-2016-state-school-results/amp/?client=safari

182 secondaries submitted their results

What a surprise that most of those 182 schools have excellent results!

There are local tables in some of the papers for 2016. I hate the things. I'd probably pay attention to a properly explained valued-added score that actually tells you something about the job done by the school rather than the quality of the intake. The two lists I hate most are (a) the % of 5A*-C including English and Maths (b) % EBAC. My problem with (a) is that it can fluctuate wildly depending on whether the kids doing badly in English are the same or different to those doing badly in maths. So you could have a school where e.g. 70% get C or better in maths, 70% C or better in English, and let's say everybody gets at least 3 other C+ grades. The league table measure could be anywhere from 40% (two different sets of kids weak in E&M) to 70% (exactly the same kids weak in E&M). So a school could claim a massive improvement where there was none at all. All the schools doing iGCSEs continue to be misrepresented, usually as zero. I could not care less about EBAC. Just tells you if the head is more interested in league tables than giving kids the chance to study subjects that suit them. And none of these things have any normalization based on the volatility you'd expect from the finite and variable cohort size in each school. It's endless statistical charlatanism and almost devoid of real information.

howtoimproveaschool

Interesting

Possibly the flip side to that EBACC argument is that part of the reason it was brought in was to prevent headteachers that only cared about the league tables from insisting pupils only did BTECs in order to bolster their results. There were almost certainly better ways of doing it though.

I think some of those schools on the Telegraph list could only be described as 'comprehensive' in the loosest sense of the word.

I must be the only person in the world who really likes the EBacc........

I read the article minifingerz, far too close to what has happened at DCs' school.

Sutton Trust on what's actually needed to really improve a school is far more prosaic - give feedback, accurately, quickly, every time.

I like elements of the EBACC, Bertrand. Like many things the current govt brought in, it probably could have been better if it had been thought through carefully.

Given they raised the school leaving age, if they had wanted to they could have done a complete restructuring of the secondary curriculum to create a broad and balanced curriculum if that was their aim.

I think the Progress 8 measure (and attainment 8) is an improvement on both extremes of ebacc for all vs making or letting academically able kids do loads of BTecs to game the system.

Progress and Attainment 8 encourages students to take some academically challenging subjects including languages, humanities and sciences but allows them to play to their strengths (particular example being that languages are very difficult for some students and had caused an imbalance of workload). The rest of the spaces in the 'bucket' can be taken up with arts and humanities. I think it's good.

Everyone would be so much better off if they abolished them.
I would look at them but not use them to choose a school.

I'm sure there's a MNer whose DD ended up doing something stupid like 15 GCSE equivalents over years 9-11. Including some things she did the BTEC for in yr 9 and the GCSE for in yrs 10 and 11. I'm not sure that even counts in the league tables. It's a strategy for pulling in the right sort of parents on open days.

Progress and attainment 8 should be better. Would be better still if English could double count without you having to take both Lit and Lang. I don't see any reason why that has to be the case if what you are trying to encourage is children leaving school with the necessary life skills.

That's a good point, Rafals. It's a real shame the joint lit/language qualification has been dropped, imo.

The Telegraph list is of schools THAT HAVE SENT THEIR INFO TO THE TELEGRAPH
it is NOT the validated League table
ignore it unless it has all 2,600 GCSE schools in it

Gnome what's the initials of your dcs school, can I ask? All sounds very familiar

Thank you Talkin! You said what I was going to say.
The school I work in decided not to submit this year, as after all the changes we didn't think it would be a meaningful comparison.

Turns out, on publication, we'd have been in the top 30. The school does well with its intake, but it's not in the top 30 schools in the whole of England!

It almost made sense until that point. The way it was supposed to work out was that mathematically it would be better sit fewer GCSEs at higher grades than fill all 8 spaces and get low grades. With Eng and maths being double weighted it would benefit those that took fewer options and spent more time focusing on the core subjects (assuming you can find enough maths teachers and make the timetable work). Then they decided you needed an extra qualification so you lose the extra curriculum time you free up.

"The Telegraph list is of schools THAT HAVE SENT THEIR INFO TO THE TELEGRAPH"

Talkin nails it as usual. What is of slight interest is those schools that decide not to send their info in. I can think of at least two not on that table that would be top. They do have it on their website so they aren't so shy, it's just advertising dressed up as lazy journalism. Another won't publish at all until all the "appeals" are done.

If progress 8 was about kids leaving school with necessary life skills, there wouldn't be an Ebacc bucket. It's about kids leaving school with approved, academic qualifications.

MN164
I am ultra aware of the difference because 2 years ago DD had a full cohort remark in English Language resulting in 70 grade changes (out of 300)

I'm also aware (as a public sector auditor) that the Hellograph accept whatever the school tell them
if you want a laugh, look at the 2015 Torygraph table compared with the DfE table for Grammar schools
over egging does not even come close

Always interesting to see what schools will try to get away with.

West London Free seem to be advertising the fact that 100% of pupils of pupils taking separate sciences achieved A*-C. The fact that's the only science result they're publishing raises a few questions I think.

Suspect it's more an inability to organise a piss up in a brewery than malice noble. Progress 8 bears all the hallmarks of Gove having the beginnings of a good idea but totally failing to think through all the implications before introducing it.

the only difference between now and a couple of years ago is that it is a different group that is fiddling the figures.

Lets not forget that some of the results are 1-9, some are A-G and others are D, M and P. none of the results fit neatly in to the any of the others sections as boundaries, grades etc. have been messed with.

Boneyback
Lets not forget that some of the results are 1-9, some are A-G and others are D, M and P. none of the results fit neatly in to the any of the others sections as boundaries, grades etc. have been messed with.

DSs GCSE cert listed what grade his funny qual was worth

I'm not aware of any 1-9 in the current cohort

and the best way to fix results is to stop thick kids taking under your reg no - a luxury state schools have not had for years

greathat RCC/RA

9-1 starts next summer for maths and English and, I think, the following summer for everything else.

Talkin

0-1 for English and Maths. Most to follow next year some to follow the year after.

From the information that we have been given an old GCSE C is not the same as a new C as the old C was a 4 and the new C is a 5 but that doesn't fit as a new C is a 4 or 5 depending on your marks.