Can school refuse to give out the breakdown of GCSE results?

[Titsywoo]

In the past on some school websites I have seen a full breakdown of the previous years GCSE results (i.e. each subject then how many students got an A, B etc etc). My DDs school doesn't show this (although I'm sure I've seen it in the past years) and I want to request it to see how they do in certain subjects now DD is choosing her options. Are they allowed to refuse to give me this information?

You can make a Freedom of Information request for aggregate numbers. There are limited circumstances in which they can refuse the request. If they do you are entitled to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.

I’ve just requested the A level breakdown from DS’s school from head of 6th form. His response was before he provided a link could he ask why I wanted it . So told him we have a child who will be making decisions in not too distant future, want to come from informed position as we have been able to do with 5 other local schools from their websites.

A link appeared that takes you to a page on the website that you can’t find unless unless you have it and it became pretty obvious looking at the results. I was ready to do a FOI request as next step had they not provided it. Anyway, job done, got it and he’ll go over my dead body. DS took one look at them and laughed .

This information is publicly available, go to compare school performance, download data, choose KS4 qualifications, find the right tab and filter for the school you want.

This information is publicly available

The publicly available information does not go to the level the OP wants. She is after performance in individual subjects. You cannot, for example, see how pupils performed specifically in Geography from the publicly available information.

You can and I've detailed how above. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered writing it.

I followed your instructions to double check before posting. You can't. The data types available related to KS4 are provisional KS4 performance, revised KS4 performance, provisional KS4 pupil destinations and KS4 pupil destinations. I can see, for example, overall figures for EBACC Humanities subjects (how many entered, how many achieved a 9-1 pass, how many achieved a 9-4 pass, how many achieved a 9-5 pass and so on) but nothing for the individual subjects.

Just bear in mind that one year's data doesn't bear any relation to another year's - teachers come and go, specifications change, heads of department change and the make up of the classes themselves vary a lot. If you had a class of 10 students and one has a long-term illness, one suffers family problems during the year and one has poor attendance for mental health issues, that's 30% of the class who might underperform for very real reasons, but they'll just show up as a "bad" result on the data. It really doesn't mean an awful lot.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/download-data?currentstep=region&downloadYear=2017-2018&regiontype=all&la=0

Thank you. It seems the critical step is that you have to say you want the data for all of England at step 2. If you say you just want the data for one LA it doesn't offer you the full range of information.

Thanks dataeducator that is really helpful. Interesting how schools can make their results sound a lot better than reality by the wording/percentages they use!

Extremely helpful! I have just passed on DataEducator's advice on how to do this on another similar thread.

I admit to being a complete geek on these things, so having ca 97,000 rows of data in Excel - and that's just one of the tabs - has been brilliant.

I don't live in the UK and have been asking for similar information and have been met with every excuse in the book. I need data to make decisions.. it's how I am wired!!

Is the information also available by gender?

This is really useful. We are considering options and wanted this data too and school data is very limited and very selective which often means something is being hidden.