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.

CIE are not in many schools - according to their own website
I've said on other threads that their accreditation should be reviewed.
Even if it is not, the reputational damage they are facing will be significant.

Why can't all students do the same examinations? Tiered entry but the same papers? At least it would be a level playing field.
It would not however be equality of opportunity or social justice for those students who start with every disadvantage against those who start with every advantage. And that is what is wrong with our state education system in a nutshell.

Not our state education system, our whole education system. It favours the already very privileged over the already disadvantaged.

Not in many UK schools but my understanding was that the "I" stands for International and that they primarily cater for the overseas market.

Which is one reason why the English may be a bit odd as their target cohort are from overseas. That said I don't remember either of my DC, who both did CIE iGCSE English, doing any course-work. DD also took CIE international biology A level, which she found tough. Oddly the board they both found easiest was WJEC. (Except when WJEC sent the school the wrong sample papers - in Welsh!)

As do all systems.

Lets try to work with the current system and tweak it back in the right direction

• improve oversight
• improve accountability
• improve transparency

rather than throwing everything out and starting again

needmoresleep
CIE cover a lot of the "international" schools
www.cie.org.uk/programmes-and-qualifications/
But when you look for a school, in my home town there are five

• an academically selective private
• a non selective private
• a state school that has a high number of international transient students
• the two worst state schools who are playing the C/D game

Their raison d'etre is international schools. Someone has to set exams for them - across a myriad of time zones.

There have been a lot of threads on iGCSEs against GCSEs. I don't think the case is at all proven that academic and selective private schools choose iGCSE because they are considered easier. My understanding from seeing DC go through private schools was that the main concern was that the syllabi should provide a good preparation for A level. (And indeed initially to minimise coursework as this was thought to be something that could be gamed.)

Sorry to be a pedant, people, but it's IGCSE - the I stands for International. It's not an Apple product . I do a lot of work for them.

perhaps DC would have found English a bit easier if it had tested their ability to use social media rather than use language.

And all the people on this thread getting upset about THIS practice, WHAT have you done to stop your schools getting rid of pupils with SEN, all the way through the years? If nothing, then fuck off now with your fake concern over these practices. Pretty much every parent who has a child with Sen has experienced the sly nudge, the " would,your child not be better off elsewhere". All of these such nudges being totally illegal of course. You either deplore ALL such practices or none.

For background the Kent Independent Education Advice blog has been highlighting the issue for a while:

www.kentadvice.co.uk/peters-blog/news-a-comments/item/1002-maidstone-girls-and-invicta-grammars-advice-on-sixth-form-non-admission-and-exclusions.html

The point is it is iGCSE which independent schools can take full advantage of to advantage their already advantaged students - and they do so, whilst state schools are penalised unfairly if they do so. DH teaches in one that has 60% of students who qualify for Pupil Premium. They live mainly on one of the toughest estates in the whole country. Last year they took iGCSE English ad Lit and 65% gained a C or better. This year they had to do 100% examination GCSE and results fell to 39% 4 or better. The teachers did not cheat as many will no doubt say must have happened, it is common sense that children perform better when they have time to think and discuss, can plan and make notes, can re-draft and produce their best efforts rather than their first effort in response to something they saw minutes earlier as they opened the exam paper. Students in independent schools still take advantage of the iGCSE but DH's students can not do so.

The potential grey area is being asked to leave a course during the sixth form.

I do not believe this is lawful - but this issue (if it comes to court) will need to be determined.

The legislation is clear. Schools are permitted to refuse to enter a pupil for an exam in certain circumstances - the governing body must make this decision.

I do not think getting C (or even a D or E) is sufficient reason not to put a pupil into an exam. A U grade would seem a good reason.

The student is accepted onto the course at the start of Year 12. I believe the student has what is termed a legitimate expectation that they will be allowed to complete the course, providing they comply with the discipline requirements. Legally I do not believe the school are entitled to unilaterally withdraw a child from a course once they have been accepted at the start of Year 12. They can, of course, offer advice about the prospect for success in the chosen course.

School may not exclude for academic grounds so that should be an easy matter for the court. If a school removes a child from course so they have no courses left to study then, I believe that would breach the legitimate expectation that the child will be able to complete the course to conclusion.

If the courts decide that the student does not have an expectation that they are entitled to complete the course. In other words the school have discretion to withdraw a student from a course then the case may be lost.

No legal expertise so the above is personal opinion only.

"My understanding from seeing DC go through private schools was that the main concern was that the syllabi should provide a good preparation for A level"

Yep, that's the marketing...

I don't disagree.

But that's the danger of generalising. DD did a lot of extra-curricular with kids from a range of schools, often involving weekend trips away with all sneaking time to do their homework. A big surprise was the variation in MFL syllabi. Some, including the one used by a big name London academic girls school, were very easy. The MFL IGCSEs DD did were tougher, though we both hated the need essentially to learn a script for the oral. (Great if she ever needs to have a conversation about recycling with a German!) Goodness knows what board DS took but we liked the way the language was taught some way beyond the syllabus, as a language that might be used or studied further, making the actual GCSE content largely irrelevant.

I can see it is a very different matter for those on the c/d boundary. I can see why some schools might work hard to find a way to get pupils their all important passes in maths and English.

But back to the subject. Regardless of which board St Olaves requires essentially all As and A*s at GCSE to gain a place, and then sets an entrance exam for new entrants in their prospective A level subjects. These kids should be good enough. And if they are not, the school might do better trying to work out why a sizable proportion of the cohort are slipping back rather than simply kicking them out.

Now that A levels are linear, finding an alternative school to complete the final years must be well-nigh impossible.

St Os has a very poor rep for pastoral care of any sort. It's just a hothouse exam factory - my DS went to an open day there a few years ago and we were horrified by the place.

Another interesting report in the Guardian today indicating that there are more potential challenges, and also that at least one former parent governor says they weren't happy about sixth form entry practice - www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/31/more-london-sixth-form-schools-face-threat-of-legal-cases-for-exclusion?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=Education+%26+Com+Care

And it looks as if, by implication, the Department for Education supports the pupils:

"The Department for Education has not commented directly on the St Olave’s case because of the legal proceedings, but in a statement released on Wednesday it said its pupil registration regulations made clear that schools are not allowed to remove pupils from sixth form because of academic attainment once they are enrolled. “Excluding pupils temporarily or permanently for non-disciplinary reasons is unlawful,” it said."

I have been wondering - based on this case but also a recent Home Ed thread on which it was stated that some schools are encouraging parents to withdraw children with SEN to home ed to avoid them appearing on GCSE statistics, and also that liaison between mainstream and Special schools is poor - whether there should be a change to when / if schools can remove children from their roll.

So for example, in my plan a school that admits a child to its 6th form commits, at that point, to have that pupil appear on their Year 13 results. If the child gets poor Year 12 results, and the decision is taken for them to move to another school/ college to take BTECs, then those results still appear on the first school's statistics. Equally if the pupil ends up in the hospital education system, a Special school, a PRU, prison,. drops out entirely - all of those appear on their statistics. Possibly in a section headed 'pupils not attending the school but registered there at end Y13', or something, but must be included in the headline results. A little bit like some secondaries currently use 'off site provision' for some pupils - perhaps to offer a wider range of vocational courses than are economically provided on site - but those results still appear on the 'home' school's statistics.

Equally, schools that admit pupils for GCSE courses (I am in two minds about when this would start, as I don't want there to be a 'cull' at 13 - perhaps it should just be 'pupils who are admitted to the school at 11 or following a move of location') could be held accountable for that child's results at 16. It would force much greater links between Special Schools, PRUs, alternative education placements etc and the 'home' school, which can only be a good thing, but also stop covert 'weeding out' of some pupils who might affect results, because they would still 'appear'... and perhaps encourage schools to really eliminate bullying or lack of suitable SEN provision, because if a child moves schools as a result of bullying, then the original school remains responsible for their results.

Obviously there would have to be some mechanism to transfer 'home' school under limited circumstances such as a genuine house move, and there might be circumstances in which a child's results are 'counted' in two places (as it seems wrong to prevent a school or college 'receiving' a BTeC student, who then does very well, from having those results on their data). however, i do think that something needs to be done to make schools responsible for any pupils who they 'manage out' in order to massage their figures.

Chucking kids out halfway through their A-levels seems to me to be bad practice unless the kids have been truanting or not working, or have absolutely failed the subjects and shown their inability to continue the course.

I don't understand either (a different topic but it's been discussed in this thread) why we can't move towards one board setting all GCSE and all A-level type exams. As Needsmoresleep says, my sons' private school originally moved to IGCSEs from GCSEs so that they didn't need to do the coursework and controlled assessment, which they felt were time consuming and didn't enable enough teaching to take place.

My younger son this year did 4 CIE IGCSEs, both Englishes and two MFLs, and, interestingly, despite Lulu's asseverations about the content of IGCSEs, all 4 were final exams only, no coursework or controlled assessment. There was no speaking/listening for English Language but there were orals for the MFL. Coursework options may exist but he didn't do them. The only subjects for which he had any controlled assessments were the OCR GCSEs he took in Drama and History, which are accepted by all schools. None of the IGCSEs had any coursework.

ontopof
I don't understand either (a different topic but it's been discussed in this thread) why we can't move towards one board setting all GCSE and all A-level type exams
Who would oversee it and ensure quality and rigour?
Politicians?
Unelected anonymous civil servants?

At least with the current system, there is competition between boards to be seen to be rigorous but fair
they poach staff and schools from each other
and some have a different emphasis

• when I was at school the Nuffield science papers were the bees knees for example

Essentially sleep has summed it up :

And if they are not, the school might do better trying to work out why a sizable proportion of the cohort are slipping back rather than simply kicking them out.

The refusal of the school to shoulder any responsibility is astonishing.

My school says that students who get Us in AS (and sometimes an E ) cannot proceed in that subject to A2. In order to get around the linear conundrum, many local school enter either those at risk of failure, or all students for AS.

Students generally are made repeatedly aware of this, though and it is a very different scenario because my school is pointing out that really, education at A Level is not for this child.

I was idly wondering yesterday , though, what my school will now say to the four or five boys who did 4 ASs and gained Es and Us in all of them!

When I was at school, out of my A level group of 40, 17 had to fully retake their A levels.
The head was edged out but then hired by one of the highest profile schools in the country.
When that school tired of her it made the national press.

My school never bothered to tell my parents that I was skipping lessons for weeks at a time.
Or find out why I was
They just took the cash and ignored the problems.

I thought this was quite common, the Grey Coat Hospital does this, my niece said 25 people were either forced out or left if they didn't get the grades.

He's certainly an interesting chap, their head. Son of Turkish immigrants, state school educated , concert pianist and has maths degree form UCL as well as a degree from Sheffield Uni and the Royal College of Music (not sure how he did all this!!). He also plays/ played rugby. And will no doubt think he is quite something as he was awarded a £40000 golden hello to be head at one school.

Such is education these days : a cut throat business.

No degree from Oxbridge, so he wouldn't make his own newsletter...