What are STATE schools in London like?

[TeenTimesTwo]

I've been reading with mild interest the issue of exploding offers for CLGS.

But it made me wonder. From what I see in media (TV news, and papers), I have the impression that state schools in London have made great steps forward over the past 10-15 years and are now considered very good.

Is that true? Not just for schools with convoluted admissions criteria (like Grey Coats?) but on average for your ordinary run of the mill local secondary?

If so, why so much angst over applying to so many private schools? And the willingness to set up your 11 year olds for such long commutes? Is the education really so much better? Or is it 'snob value' or fear of the unknown, or 'because that's what my social circle does' or old reputations?

comeinpax
The percentage of top grades at GCSE merely tells you how selective the school was with its intake.

A comprehensive school will always have lower A level percentages than a selective school - because it takes ALL of the kids, not just a subset.

A huge chunk of MN seems to forget that huge numbers of 16 years olds do not take A levels and massive numbers do not go to University

"Or is it that there isn't any angst around them, you put your child's name down at birth / age 5 / age 7 and if you are in the first 100 bingo you have the place?"

There's only one prep I can think of which requires a registration in the first month or so if the infants life. But there are various 'first come first served' preps where you probably need to do this is practice (because they start with nursery, and you need to put down just as early for them).

There aren't any truly non-selective private schools in London, and as long as you register before the deadline, your DC can be assessed. Some guillotine their lists at a certain number of applicants, so you dinMt want to leave it too late, but the school which did that the most (guillotine falling earlier and earlier each year) has now abandoned the system.

CLSG is anomalous, and has been much criticised (it's arguably a bepreach if ISC standards for admission). I think opting for this system reflects the ethos of the school, and should be counterpointed to nearly every other school - because they all face the same constraints and difficulties when making offers, but manage to have year groups with the right number of what they see as desirable pupils. Whether you want to deal with a school that honours its offers is a question of how a family views that ethos.

But I digress....

.... London state schools are generally pretty good, and a handful are very good. The snag is securing entry to them, and there are still large areas if London where you have no real choice (despite having 6 spaces on the pan-London form) and the only school you can be reasonable sure of getting an offer from might well be one you dislike (for whatever reason, and yes some (but not all) people will have shabby motivations).

OTOH, London private schools are excellent. The angst in threads is about people over-thinking very small differences between very good schools. And of course it seem a Big Deal right now as this is the peak of the private school admissions season.

There probably isn't much that doesn't happen in private schools that doesn't happen in state schools at all, but provision may be patchier in state schools. I'm thinking of range of sports on offer, level of facilities, abundance of supplies, better maintenance, amount of participation in competitions and enrichment events, co-curricular provision and university and career advice. Also, lack of (central and local) governmental diktat (which binds different types of maintained school to varying degrees, but which none are totally free of).

Whether you value those aspects of education is up to individuals. And of course has to be set against how you see the respective communities in the schools. Only a few are rich enough to have a bursary policy that really means a broader parental income spread, but not everyone is incredibly rich (especially once they've shelled out for fees). They are probably more diverse than they are sometimes given credit for - especially those which attract the offspring of the international business community.

London private schools are excellent
The missing word there is most
as there are some utterly dire ones and some nasty hothouse ones

• same a state schools in fact

Now I'm wondering which you think are dire! (and how you are defining London)

Hothouse is entirely subjective. Because a genuinely clever pupil will find even the schools with the most entrenched reputations just great places to learn. Just like not every pupils would do well in a state grammar school because the academic pace was wrong for them.

One of the state schools my daughter has applied for is outstripping local private schools academically. Even if she doesn't get into this particular school, the other choices are very good. I cannot afford private, even with a bursary. If I could afford it, the only reason I would consider it is for the extra-curricular activities, and the possible connections she will make.

anothernewt
Definition of London = 0208 or 0207 phone number
Definition of hothouse = year 1 and 2 kids being tested to the point of regular tears
Definition of Dire = unhappy teachers, unhappy kids, results sliding, fees rising
based on DH working at them over the years

OP, there are quite a few 4-18 schools in London tha, it's fair to say, cater for the not-so-bright (though some weed out the less academic). They still claim to test the kids at 4, but it's not the world's most exact test, so that's one way to get round the craziness. New private schools open constantly to cope with demand for the not-so-bright or the poor dc who relocate and haven't been prepped for 11+ but if they're any good they become harder to get into too. The London market is hugely pumped up by the number of expats here who simply will not countenance state education for whatever reason and look at you (well me) in astonishment when I admit my dc once attended a state school.

I went to a dire comp on the coast, it was the only option that wasnt an hour bus ride.
My dn s will go to the same comp as according to dsis we did ok there.
All of my 6 london choices plus the school i dont want which is a distinct possibility outstrip said comp, i have spent 3 yrs getting my eldest upto speed as when we moved back he was 2 years behind in his large diverse city primary. I had been told he was fine and doing well in the primary that feeds into dire school on the coast.
So if you compare london schools to many rural ones they are much better, more diverse, smaller classes, engaged teachers with better extra curricular activities. You also have more choice.

Quicker - Plenty of well off to very rich send their children to state schools. Are they asked for donations? Do state schools ask successful former alumni for money?

Yes and yes, at both my DCs state schools

As a comprehensive parent from one of the very poorest-funded counties in England (in terms of £ per pupil funding) I'm wryly amused by the 'state schools in London have no money'.

Many have double the funding per pupil a local comprehensive here would have. If schools in London are feeling the pinch, imagine what it's like elsewhere?

Tbh, comprehensives in London perform very well, in terms of value added / progress (which is probably the best measure available, despite its faults, of the school rather than its intake).

There seem to be 3 reasons for this:

• Relatively high funding compared with elsewhere (and the legacy of the pan-London improvement programme that did create a step change in many areas)
• High proportions of ethnic groups with high academic aspirations (remembering that after a few smaller groups like Travellers, it is poor white British boys who generally achieve least well at school)
• An obvious reason to gain qualifications, through living in a place where jobs exist, and where the prosperity of those who have jobs is relatively obvious (this is not true in e.g. deprived ex-industrial northern areas, where generations of worklessness and lack of local employment to aspire to has depressed aspiration significantly)

On an 'absolute results' level, of course these schools won't compare with elite private schools - but it is impossible to compare schools that are so different in terms of intake in any meaningful way.

We pay a donation every term to primary its not a huge amount, about £60 per year per child but everyone pays it, there is also a very active pta who pull in around 26k a year.

Gowgirl
Your analysis is right .... and it comes back to what I said up thread about local opportunity
DH's euphemism is Yeoman stock .... folks who have lived in an area for hundreds of years and see no need to move and consider that progress is for others.
Schools full of them are depressing places often beautiful geographically but depressing

Londoners are often shocked to discover that NO PART of London is in the most deprived areas of England.

Thats exactly it! Beautifull place but no aspirational jobs. Parents see the school run and reading books as a chore, these children are behind in primary even though they are pottering along nicely.. by secondry that view of life is already set and most go nowhere.

I must implore you to avoid endz

TalkinPeace You keep saying that nowhere in London is deprived. This statement flies in the face of actual, real statistics. London contains some of the most deprived communities in the UK. This is a fact, backed up by real, actual statistics.

I know it's not a competition - the UK contains many areas of deprivation and all of them are an indication of the unfairness of unequal wealth distribution and the needless foreshortening of lives and life opportunities.

However, it actually is quite alarming to think that people play so fast and loose with facts.

Here is a fantastic map you can play around with. It's the product of massive amounts of work, by experts, drawing on a rich source of data here

Please look at it. You are, actually, wrong in your assertions - which you state forcefully and repeatedly.

I find it somewhat scary to think that people may mistake the vehemence and regularity of your assertions for a. experience (as you often reveal in your posts , you have none - you neither live in London, nor attended a state school, nor do you have any kind of direct experience of either - your husband visiting schools doesn't, actually, count) or b. particular education or professional training in this area (again, chatting to your husband when he arrives home in the evening and vehemently stating opinions again and again on the internet is not, actually, a professional qualification).

Well, simple facts are that independent schools have 3-5x the funding per pupil compared to state schools so the classes are bound to be smaller, facilities much better and variety of activities on offer greater.

It's also a well-researched fact that in the indie sector, a child will on average get 0.5 higher GCSE grades than in a comp (comparing like for like ability levels).

Whether the academic and non-academic extras (not to mention the snob factor) are worth fees is for parents to decide. Provided they're in a financial position to even contemplate the matter.

I also think grammars are a great idea - at least parents of highly academic children have a good option for them.

Talkin yes, there probably more scope for variance in prepreps

(Still wondering which you mean! The established preps aren't as you describe, but I don't really know so much about the newer ones further out in the suburbs)

If schools in London are feeling the pinch, imagine what it's like elsewhere? does this actually have to be imagined? London schools were underfunded compared to most of the country until about 15 or so years ago, and it is the turn-around that now makes then averagely funded that has helped foster the big improvement in state schools, especially secondaries (something which might not really have seeped in to public consciousness year).

For example, in the two places where I have lived in London the secondary nearest (and only ones we could be sure of getting an offer from) were utterly woeful. Obviously my Location Location Location radar is off, because they were both schools regularly featuring on the then 'worst in London' lists, and had huge behavioural issues. But one has really turned around, and people like it. The other has been taken over and has improved considerably. If those improvements bed in, the reputation will change but there's quite a long lag until it does.

catfromjapan
You keep saying that nowhere in London is deprived. This statement flies in the face of actual, real statistics. London contains some of the most deprived communities in the UK. This is a fact, backed up by real, actual statistics.
Um, nope.
The most deprived parts of London are richer than the poorest parts of all the other major cities, and some minor ones, and several coastal areas
as per the Government data set dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/idmap.html

Less than 200 yards from where I sit is an area that is more deprived than ANY part of London.
and then people wonder why I did not send my kids to my local school

catfromjapan
On 7th Feb this year on another thread I posted this .....

the poorest part of London is Hackney 018B in Hackney Wick
it is the 586 out of 32844 most deprived locations
Portsmouth, Southampton, Thanet, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull
all have MUCH poorer areas
(the poorest 5 are in Blackpool, Essex, Blackpool, Thanet and Blackpool again)
London scores low on deprivation because it has
- transport
- jobs
- education options
all of which are funded much more generously than the rest of the country
You can download and sort the data set if you like - but big spreadsheets are rather a hobby of mine

My DCs are in London Indys but lots of friends DCs have done spectacularly well in good London state schools. Yes, they are "nice leafy school comps" and all the usual cliches but bright DCs do very well at these schools.

In our area of SW London parents seem to have been sold on to the idea that state primary schools are fine but once a child enters senior school you need to pay fees. This is a myth encouraged by the Indy schools themselves. State primary school parents are very smug about obtaining places at Indy senior schools at 11+ but they are less smug 6 years and £120k later when they are visiting the same universities as the state primary classmates who remained in the state system.

The parents of Richmond have done so much in recent years to improve parental choice by opening new schools etc. I am looking forward to seeing how they affects the numbers tranferrring to the private sector over the next 5 years.

but they are less smug 6 years and £120k later when they are visiting the same universities as the state primary classmates who remained in the state system

Also, can we be a little bit more precise with the whole "immigrants = success in schools" discourse, please?

This report is recent, and detailed.

It is not the case that the success of London state schools is simply down to some blanket thing about immigration. I have absolutely no wish to diminish the achievements of children - and the families they are part of - in the UK education system. However, the achievements and outcomes are more nuanced than a simple story of "strong work ethic, raising standards in the schools they arrive in."

I'm really fed up of "simple stories". Facts are more interesting - and I think it's time we started listening to experts again.

Honestly, I would never dream of spouting a load of opinions about areas of the UK I have never visited, or been part of, or systems I know nothing about, based on having watched a few episodes of 'Midsomer Murders'. And if my knickers were completely in a twist about a particular subject, to the extent of it becoming a compulsion, I would probably take that as an indication that I might want to gain some kind of professional, expert-based, disciplanarily rigorous basis for my hobby.

it is the turn-around that now makes then averagely funded

The top 16 (in terms of per pupil funding) most highly funded LAs are all in London.

A few outer London LAs are not in the top 20. None are out of the top 30 (out of 150). How does this make them 'averagely funded'?

I suppose I was thinking about what was needed to over the years of underfunding. And that the differences between funding levels are considerably less sharp than they were.

And then of course you could argue yourself into the ground about the headline funding v various levels of granularity in proxy deprivation measures (because within boroughs there can be very seriously deprived areas, and so looking at whole council areas is not the whole answer)

I agree that areas which were underfunded before and are still underfunded are in a worse position.

thecatfromjapan
Tee hee
I study Education Data because I am DH's accountant.
We read the Ofsted report of every school he visits - so we know what he's in for.
Understanding the IMD data for an area means he does his job well.

I also study IMD data because a lot of my income is to do with Local Government and transport and infrastructure
so actually the fact that I enjoy looking at the data sets while being paid to is a total bonus.