State Schools Eclipse Eton in rankings for A-Level Science

[evenstrangerthings]

Your Life has today published a new school ranking based on STEM subject performance at A Level and ability to deliver skills for the jobs of today and the future. Several schools have climbed more than 1,000 places in new STEM rankings, while Eton and Harrow drop out of the top 100. In some instances poorly performing schools according to Ofsted have a higher than average STEM ranking. On the back of findings, Your Life Chair Edwina Dunn, has called for an ‘urgent rethink’ of the way schools are assessed to equip the country for a post BREXIT world.

Report and full table at:

https://www.yourlife.org.uk/urgent-rethink-schools-assessment-required-equip-uk-post-brexit-worldd_

Let's be clear - parents who send their children to Eton are not doing it for the academic results.

I suspect there are less STEM students doing A levels at Eton and Harrow and more doing Politics and Economics.

There's still a much greater percentage of independent schools in there, considering they educate perhaps 7% of the children in the U.K. (I'm not sure of the number, but someone will be).

And yes, Eton and Harrow may be famous, but they are not regarded as the most academic.

It's sensationalist reporting.

Well, though obviously the world needs STEM students, it doesn't just need STEM students.

The Kings College Maths School only does about 4 subjects, Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Computing and selects on the basis of A* at Maths and Physics GCSE and a maths aptitude test, so it's not really surprising that it tops a STEM chart - it's highly selective and there won't be anyone there studying history or languages or English or philosophy. If I had a child who was good at maths and lived nearby, I'd certainly consider this school.

The world will be infinitely less interesting though if we try to make every school like this, and we will be lacking some very valuable skills.

A lot of independents don't do A levels either, not sure about Eton.

I'm not surprised as Eton and harrow don't prepare children for jobs of today or the future.
They tend not to have a job but a career in Politics, Economics and Law.

Is it only A level performance that is counted? Do schools which do IB won't be in there at all, and those which do Pre-U in one or more subjects won't feature where they might if all A level (bit like the many independents who don't get any pupils with 5A*-C GCSE because they do IGCSE which doesn't count).

Also, the bar chart was interesting, in that only for independent schools is the performance across all subjects pretty much the same as performance in STEM. The others all have quite large discrepancies one way or the other.

So is there also an (unfortunate) message there, that if you don't know where your DC's talents and interests will lie at 11/13 the type of school which caters equally well for STEM and humanities are those in the private sector?

And yet the article says that Eton comes 9th in the rankings for all A-level subjects so it seems a bit odd to protest that it's not academic.

I guess it prioritises a classical education over a STEM one.

Looking at the list, it is all the usual schools you would expect to be there.

I suppose people at Eton (and other big name private schools) are rich enough not to be worried about raw employability. I don't mean that quite as facetiously as it might appear. I think if you come from a very affluent background, you might not worry quite so much about taking subjects that don't immediately lead to, say, engineering or medicine or an obvious career path.

My son could do STEM subjects at A-level - he will probably get good enough grades for most sixth form programmes, if not Kings College Maths School (though you never know). But he would be miserable and do much less well at them than he will at his humanities subjects. I firmly believe, within reason, you should pursue the studies you want to and you will probably find that it leads you to the life you want, even if you don't know what that is yet.

Thing is, kids pursuing the studies they want to isn't any use to the country if it turns out they all want to study Media or Ancient Greek. The country needs STEM graduates and so the government needs to funnel as many kids down that route as it can, regardless of what they think they want to study.

What it doest include on that first table is which schools are academically selective.

Its okay saying xxx school is at the top or whatever, but it is meaningless without context.

I assume the majority of the top 25, whether state or independent, are selective schools and not really truly comprehensive state schools.

It might not be as much use to the country, but it might be more use to the individual. Of course the country needs STEM graduates, but it also needs teachers of other subjects and lawyers and people who work in service industries and writers and designers and TV producers and chefs and musicans. It may need more STEM graduates than it needs all the others, but forcing people who are brilliant at or passionate about other things to pursue a STEM career is not what parents or teachers would do.

That doesn't mean the national strategy is wrong. Clearly it's a good idea to persuade as many people as possible, ie anyone who might be interested in it, to pursue STEM subjects, but I think there should be some latitude in listening to what people think they might want to do.

Love that it is imagined that STEM subjects would matter to majority of ex public school pupils. My daughter's boyfriend is old Etonian and studying engineering. He'll go into racing car design because he knows someone in the field but he was thought to be a bit of a duffer. My youngest was thinking of studying medicine but when she went to public school her view changed because medicine was seen not as a top career to aspire to but something a bit worthy and a social faux pas. The top degrees from their two years were PPE, classics, economics and the arts.

How is the table actually compiled?

Do they look at the total number of A levels, the proportion that are in STEM subjects, and factor that in?

Also, which subjects count as STEM for this survey? And how are non A-level results included (if at all)?

According to that ranking, my children's (partially selective state) school performs much better than the (fully selective independent) school I went to.

Eton is a very academic school and it is utterly ridiculous to say the parents aren't interested in results.

*Today 18:28 ILikeyourHairyHands

A lot of independents don't do A levels either, not sure about Eton.*

Most of them do.

This table is bullocks sorry. Nearly all the state schools are selective grammars and a large number of them are fiercely fought for to gain a place even more so than private school. Some schools like Kendrick have 10:1 ratio of applications and these are super selective free grammars.

What am I supposed to deduce from this article?

Crumbs1. That is totally ridiculous. My DD is friends with lots of ex Harrow pupils. Generally Eton is considered more academic but of these young men, some are engineers, doctors, others work in insurance, banking and law. Another one is a sustainable food expert. One thing they have in common: they all work very hard indeed!

I would have been more than happy for my DDs to be good at STEM like their Dad, but they are not. They could not compete and why should they have a life hating what they do? The child doing media studies is highly unlikely to be a keen stem student! However where students could do well in stem, it is up to teachers to enthuse them and show them the world of possibilities.

Bizarrely, that link doesn't seem to give you any means of finding out what the methodology used to construct that ranking is - which makes me very suspicious of it. From this quote:

As expected there is a positive correlation between delivery of A*-B A levels in all subjects and delivery of high grades in STEM A levels, but the percentage of A level entries in STEM varies greatly per school and therefore so does overall STEM ranking.

I suppose it's combining how popular STEM subjects are at the school with how well students who take them do - which is OK if that's what floats your boat...

Eton's A level results can be inspected here. For example, in summer 2016, it seems 46 boys took A2 Chemistry, of whom 22 got A-star, and 43 got A-star to B inclusive. That seems, at any rate, good enough to be confident one's budding chemist will have the opportunity to do well if he puts in the work.

Maybe someone who has the statistics of one or more other schools on the list at their fingertips might like to reverse engineer what the algorithm must have been? (I might, but not tonight, and not honestly sure I care enough to do it at all!)

Sorry Buddles my experience of Etonalbeit through daughter's boyfriend, neighbours boys and friends and direct experience of other public schools is that vocational jobs are considered lower status than areas like banking and politics. Certainly he was only one going into engineering from his year at Eton and was seen as lower achieving- Eton is highly academic but Arts/classics are seen as more prestigious than STEM subjects.
My two doctor children came through different systems. The eldest was a comprehensive pupil who was seen as high achieving with medicine considered as the realm of the creme de la creme. My other doctor child finished off education at major public school and was seen as not really aiming high enough and settling for a lower status career; the view was that whilst being worthy it wouldn't make them rich.
Let me assure you the comprehensive educated child had to work much, much harder in much more challenging circumstances to get similar outcomes.

Maybe someone who has the statistics of one or more other schools on the list at their fingertips might like to reverse engineer what the algorithm must have been? (I might, but not tonight, and not honestly sure I care enough to do it at all!)*
*
King's Maths School, the top school on the tables got 100% A star/A at Maths A-Level with 83% at A star. (Eton was 55% at A star) King's Maths School require prospective students to take a maths test and many students also have add maths/further maths at GCSE. Having said that, their overall value added score places them in the top 1% of schools.

At a quick glance most, if not all the schools in the Top 100 in the list are selective at A-Level.

However without knowing the exact criteria for deciding placement in the table, at best it's a useful guide for academic students who want to take all STEM subjects at A-Level.

A much greater proportion of Etonians take maths and economics and relatively few chemistry, probably reflects a bias to high earning STEM careers rather than medicine and research scientist .

Having said that comparing Elton with KCL, Eton's results for physics (no chemistry or Biology at KCL school) are at least as good as KCL school, about 76% A / A at Eton, 57% at KCL school. Ditto for further maths ( which would be taken by the same sort of pupils that would be enter KCL school), 80% A / A at Eton, 58% at KCL.
So this table is very much biased towards proportion of subject uptake by pupils rather than results

STEM subjects are of course important but there is a rather monochromatic ambition from parents at super selective grammar school for their DCs to aim for professional STEM careers which of course skews the uptake of those subjects in those schools. Whether these pupils also develop the creativity required to producing the major advances in STEM subjects is up for debate. Certainly in that regard the USA system does n't seem to suffer from its emphasis on encouraging a broader education.

The ambition is usually for DC in state schools to aim for paths where there are jobs, and money to be earned, hence the focus on STEM.

At Eton and the like, they know they can rely on family connections to get a nice job, or family wealth to see them through unemployment and actual subject choice won't matter so much, hence they can afford to take less vocationally-minded routes.