St Olave's excluding pupils

[jeanne16]

For any school to exclude pupils after Year 12 as their exam results are not good enough is absolutely scandalous. I am pleased to see this is now going to court. I believe this is far more prevalent than people realise and does explain some of the fantastic results these schools achieve. The Guardian Article also refers to a pupil forced to sit exams as an external candidate. That is a very devious way to protect their results.

These things have happened for years in all schools like forcing or encouraging children who will not achieve to leave school to make statistics look better.

forcing kids out after gcses may be common but halfway through the A level course? When they had already screened these kid a year earlier?

It's outrageous!

If you select a bunk of kids into year 12 as being very bright, and turn around and exclude them 10 months later due to poor results - you are failing to take your duty of care to those kids seriously IMO. The school had a moral obligation to provide education that would enable those kids to achieve their potential - instead they have chosen to prioritise their own league table position over their student's welfare.

I could have completely misunderstood but when I went to London Oratory's sixth form open evening last year, I'm pretty sure they said any students not on course for hitting their A level grades at the end of the first year are asked to leave.

Not sure when this rule came in as I've had family and friends attend London Oratory and it was never like this.

I think it's quite usual TBQH but it may be the first time that parents have actually challenged the practice formally.

Apparently excluding kids due to academic performance is illegal?

I agree if poor behaviour and disastrous exam results were happening it would be 'usual' to exclude after year 12 - but these were kids who had failed to achieve 3 Bs in their AS levels. Surely that's not normal?

Some more immoral Schools can be sneakier than this as well.
Eg, 'encouraging ' children in year 9/10 to vocational colleges so don't have to carry maths and English results of less academic children.
Then, boast like crazy about their excellent results....

It is illegal to exclude on academic performance but not on repeated failure to follow academic instruction. That is difficult to prove for children who were likely to get a B at A level. Not working, not attending lessons and very low marks would have to be present to say a child is not accepting academic instruction. Plus a lot of effort to put it right.

The school can enter into a managed move if the parents agree but in these circumstances a parent would be mad to agree mid way through 6th form. The school just has a few pupils who have found 6th form more difficult than expected. They have to live with it and improve their teaching and pastoral care. It is a shameful position for the school.

You can only encourage children to look at alternative provision if the parents agree. Parents may be happy that children go elsewhere for more practical subjects. They may not.

Hardly surprising from a selective school.

I wouldn't send my DC to a grammar if you paid me a million quid.

My sister's friend was forced out of St Marylebone CofE a few years back because she got CCCB at AS

St Olave's GCSE data isn't especially impressive. Progress 8 massively favours highly selective schools like theirs and yet they are still only in the top 30% band rather than the top 5% band. I'm not surprised to find out that their brilliant A Level headline figures are a result of carefully weeding out all but the brightest candidates. If you only take A grade kids and then exclude any not making the grade your A*-A % will be impressive. It doesn't really mean much though.

Some state schools do subtle weeding out as well....
Even more depressing when less open and obvious.

I thought St Olave's was a state school. We won't enter students for A levels if they are in danger of coming out with Us but we don't exclude them, they are allowed to resit year 12. Advising kids to resit because they might fail and end up with nothing to show for two years work is not the same as excluding them with BBC at AS Level. We also very occasionally use alternative college courses for really troublesome kids to avoid permanent exclusion but they stay on our roll and their results still count. If we withdraw kids at the last minute they just go down as U grades in the results now so we don't benefit in any way from doing that either.

Actually prgress 8 does not favour selective schools. The children who have the most ground to make up from Y6, and are succcessfully taught to do that, have the best progress 8 scores. Often very bright children do not have outstanding progress 8 scores because they start at a very high level, but of course they can progress very quickly too. Given the nature of progress 8, it is not surprising that grammar schools do not fill the top 5% of progress 8 figures. It would be quite odd if they did.

Grammar schools do not routinely do this. I know plenty of "lower" performing children in Bucks Grammar schools who have not been asked to leave. The results of some of the schools reflect this. People are aghast when a grammar school does not get 100% A*-C in Maths and English, but if you keep the less academic who have been excessively tutored to get the 11 plus mark and then really struggle, you will have dips in the exam stats. Plenty of grammars are not overly selective and do take children who, without excessive tutoring, would never have had a place at the school. Children alter in personality and there can be other factors in their lives that cause performance to dip. It happens: and the 11 plus selection is not perfect.

Clearly a few grammar school children are not suited to 6th form, but I have never heard of a Bucks grammar school shifting children who were likely to get BBC at A level. They would just go to a university that accepted those grades if that is what the pupil wanted. I do not believe this is a widespread practice but it is unforgivable if the reports are correct.

It does favour selective schools, especially super selectives like St Olaves. Progress 8 groups together all students with Level 5s (or 6s) as high achieving and compares their progress to other students with Level 5s (or 6s). But a child with a 5 at the end of primary who passed the St Olaves entry test is different to a student with Level 5s who failed their entry test. They only take the very top slice of the high achievers and yet progress 8 treats all those children in that prior attainment band the same. Low attainment students in a comprehensive have their results compared to other low attainment students only. Progress 8 doesn't judge high ability students against the same progress measure as Middle or low ability so the progress of low ability students in comps doesn't pull down the P8 score of grammars.

educationdatalab.org.uk/2016/09/progress-8-is-too-favourable-to-grammar-schools-and-understates-secondary-modern-achievement/

Rebecca Allen is an anti-grammar school protester - her article is biased.

Perhaps biased but she's right about the data. When the new KS2 scores feed through progress 8 will be fairer because they differentiate more between the bright and the very bright. As it exists at the moment though P8 does favour selective schools though, especially super selectives. Somewhere like St Olaves has an inherent advantage built in because of their entry exams.

Perhaps biased but she's right about the data
Have you actually read her article? It reads like nonsense to me - "they may have just had a bad day/good day. This is the noise." ????

To be fair to Olaves, their Sixth Form information booklet states;
It is anticipated in Year 12 that students will perform at a level commensurate with the expectations in a highly selective Sixth Form in one of the nation's top grammar schools. The vast majority of Year 12 students will therefore be expected to achieve A grade levels in AS subjects or end of year examinations, with only a few gaining B grades. These students didn't achieve B grades.

I caught the end of a phone-in programme about this school on the radio this morning and the presenter (who stated that he was in favour of grammar schools) made the valid point that parents who enter their children for highly selective grammar school tests at age 11 and watch hundreds of other peoples' children being turned away because they didn't make the grade, can't then turn round and complain when their own child is turned away at age 17 because they also didn't make the grade. I am in favour of 'super- selective' grammar schools and I tend to agree with him.

It's not nonsense, the cohort of children with a prior attainment of e.g 5.4 who passed the entry exam can be reasonably sssumed to be brighter than the cohort of pupils with the same prior attainment who failed the exam. There may be exceptions but I think it's fair to assume that those who have a Level 5 and passed the 11 plus are different to those with Level 5 who failed (brighter? Better parental support? Better at performing in high stakes tests?). Likewise those with Level 4 who passed the 11 plus are a different cohort to those with Level 4 who failed. If they weren't then why does the 11 plus exist? Grammar schools believe that their entry exams are a better measure of potential than the KS2 tests (or they would just use KS2 scores) but progress 8 is based on KS2 scores and not the more accurate entry exam or 11 plus scores.

I'm fairly sure nearly all of the schools near me do this to some extent. Where I taught, students needed at least a D in any subject to carry it on from AS to A2. I'm not sure what they do now that most of the courses are over 2 years.

It's not nonsense
Failing the 11-plus suggests they may have been lucky with their KS2 exams: perhaps the questions they wanted all came up. This is the noise – things other than ability – picked up by the exam.

Well, it doesn't read very well to me.

Our experience with Olaves is similar - DS, who has SEN, was not allowed to continue with one of his subjects to A2. We successfully claimed disability discrimination against St Olaves because it was their failure to support our DS which led to his low grades at AS level. I posted on this thread in Chat.

It may not be that well worded but it doesn't change the fact that progress 8 does favour selective schools. P8 compares students to others with the same KS2 scores but selective schools filter out the brighter students with those KS2 scores whereas non-selective schools have not filtered the ones with higher KS2 scores in the same way. The KS2 scores aren't all that precise or that accurate as they stand at the minute for various reasons.

It is anticipated in Year 12 that students will perform at a level commensurate with the expectations in a highly selective Sixth Form in one of the nation's top grammar schools. The vast majority of Year 12 students will therefore be expected to achieve A grade levels in AS subjects or end of year examinations, with only a few gaining B grades

More to the point, does this booklet then go on to say what will happen if they don't?

And at what point does a school take even part of the responsibility for such flagrant underachievement??