How do a few comprehensive schools produce seem to produce successful people?

[Bahhumbug01]

Hi ,,

We live on the outskirts of London (Beckenham/Bromley postcode area) and have a young family. We are considering moving out to Edenbridge/Godstone/Crowhurst areas in the next few years. These towns all have decent comps, and excellent connections in to Central London for DH.

Our neighbours send both their DS to a Catholic school in the next town, some 12 miles away, which is accessible by tram and then involves a relatively short walk to school. The school has excellent sports facilities (on a par with some independent schools) and pastoral provision. Good academic results too. The comps in Bromley are quite poor on the whole. There is one outstanding boys gs but you have to tutor years ahead if you want to have a chance of getting DS in.

The RC school has an impressive list of alumni and I can't understand why (or how) the school has produced so many outstanding sportsmen, politicians, media types when it is just a faith comp. Is there a pecking order when it comes to comps, or is there some kind of selection involved? Does the same apply to some of the trendy North London comps too?
Also, is there no distance criteria involved for faith comps, but distance is important for 'normal' comps? It's all really confusing.

Me and DH attended normal schools (where everyone in the town went to the same school!!) out of London so are really green when it comes to London schools. We are actually a bit intimidated by it all which makes the idea of moving further out quite appealing.

Anyone else in same position, or struggling to understand the difference in admissions between different types of comps?

My DCs Comp has some impressive alumni. It does this by: encouraging achievement in all kinds of areas, which has included assessments to see if students have the right "body type" for less popular sports.
The other key aspect is keeping in touch and reaching out to successful alumni. And inviting them back to a range of activities: prize giving, careers days etc.

No selection, "catchment" even includes council housing, but it is becoming harder to get into from outside the core area.

The John Fisher School clearly selects RC boys who have been baptised at a given time and attended mass regularly. Two categories come above this: looked after children and siblings. The RC connection is category A. They have category B but the school says Category A is oversubscribed. So this system seems to produce great alumni. It’s hugely selective. It’s a very sporty school but DC that don’t meet the strict admissions criteria won’t get in. From their own web site they are clearly not admitting non catholics. I assume the boys there travel from a wide area and it’s not a local comprehensive. Travelling implies parents have money too.

I live in a different county to you and none of the local comp schools round here post lists of alumni at all - illustrious or otherwise. It's just not the done thing. I'm quite sure they have their fair share of successful former students, they just don't go on about it. Or maybe they aren't even told. Two extremely successful and well-known household names went to my dc's school, but they aren't mentioned in the school prospectus or website.

My DCs are in a Bromley comp.

DC1 was one of the highest scorers in the country in last year's GCSEs (without any extra tuition).

I don't know anything about the schools in the Bromley/Kent area, but some comprehensives are clearly doing well, and not just in leafy middle class areas. There was a lovely story on a thread a couple of weeks ago about a school in East London where lots of pupils had received offers from Oxbridge.

Brampton Manor sixth form doesn't have a catchment area and is highly selective. So to assume that it's just local children who attend this sixth form isn't true. Some students have a commute of two hours each way.

OP I'm still curious to know exactly what research you've done on the areas you're considering moving to! Edenbridge has no secondary school! And the nearest 'comp' is an academy in the next county, which is massively failing its pupils, and has just received a scathing ofsted. You're better off moving to Sevenoaks. Genuinely good schools and more reliable public transport. Plus, council tax is lower!

A RC Comp will have a stringent selection process built on proof of attendance at mass and other indicators of religious observance. Probably starting when the child was born, to get into the RC primary school.

That straight away excludes the children of chaotic households who cannot get up and out on a Sunday morning. Or those who work shifts and have no childcare, those moving from hostel to hostel escaping DV. For example.

Actually, RC comp does no selection that I can see, and that is exactly the reason for my question.

They would not be an RC school without selection.

RC schools used to get few immigrant children, then we had immigration from Poland and other countries with RC communities.

Many RC schools suddenly changed their criteria from 'baptised' to 'baptised before 12 months'. Guess what age is traditional for baptism in Poland? And assuming you want to have your family involved then if you are taking your new baby to visit grand parents and be baptised you need to get a passport and arrange the service.

Some schools also have feeder schools that can be in the next town. My old school does this, you can live next door and not get in, but if you are in the RC school in the next town you are virtually guaranteed a place.

Uniform is another way to 'weed out' 'undesirable' children, not just the cost either, my school was in a northern town that has had occasional riots. There is a large Muslim population, my school was single sex, the uniform was a skirt, a knee length skirt and had to be worn to and from school - this policy put off Muslim parents who may have otherwise considered it.

Other policies such as behaviour can also be used to further weed out other children.

It depends on your definition of successful.
Mine is something like “doing reasonably well in a job you enjoy and which suits your skills and personality, contributing to society In some way and having largely positive relationships with family and other people”.
In which case, most schools produce large numbers of successful people.

Also, I went to a private primary school and then to a very selective, elite, CofE comp in Central London, and I've done sweet FA with my life. If you're going to do well, you will. If you were destined for mediocrity (as I was) no school will change that.

A number of the most "successful" comprehensive schools operate covert selection. I've come across a few that operate a banding system by ability which purports to mean that there will be a spread of abilities in that the admission policy says that they will take, say, 25% from Band A, 50% from Band B, and 25% from Band C. If they find that they're saying No to too many Band A children, it's not too difficult to change the boundaries so that some slip down into Band B where they have a better chance of getting in.

Is it just me or have there been a suspiciously large number of threads about this particular school in recent months?

Your whole title and OP is impossible to answer really, because it begs so many questions, sets up straw man arguments etc.

No decent schools in Bromley! 🤣

religious school are selective because you have to be practicing the faith to get a space.

I like in Bromley and personally feel the borough is very well served for secondary schools. Numerous outstanding secondaries. And I came from a rural area where everyone just went to the same secondary so yes the array of options is different, but not that tricky to get your head around.

The school in question, according to the Wiki page on it (and yes, I know this may not be accurate!) operated a selective system from 1929 - 1977 and then again via parental interview from 1991 - 2008 when it seems like it was forced to stop, presumably because it was illegal! The vast majority of its famous alumni will have got into the school in one or other of the overt selection periods (as opposed to covert selection now in operation ;-) ) This is not a 'bog standard' comp OP.

Well my local secondary modern produced James Corden. Secondary modern - not even a comp. Schools can get lucky with who lives in catchment and rocks up at the school. Mostly they don’t have alumni boards on their web sites though. Most sports stars are trained away from school. Their skills are often not a huge amount to do with the school from about 14 onwards other than to give them time off to train and go to training camps.

@sashh I didn't know that about baptism timings. How bloody depressing.

I live close enough to some of the N London "trendy" schools mentioned in the OP to know that the covert selection in many of them amounts to the distance/house prices issue discussed above (Camden School for Girls and Fortismere in particular notorious for this, but there are others) plus the seemingly popular banding process, which purports to ensure an even spread of ability across each of 4 bands. The problem being that the ability spectrum is not pegged against that of the general population (as I used, naively, to assume it would be) but of those who apply; and as again mentioned above this dramatically swings admission in favour of organised, stable m/c families who can engage with the additional complexity of the process. And then of course there are the places allocated by musical/dramatic/language/sporting "aptitude" in many schools in London (several of which add faith criteria into the mix as well). All this is selection. You only have to look at the prior attainment cohort numbers for these schools to see this. Higher prior attainers are axiomatically kids who (generally) tend to be more focussed, less disruptive in class, easier to teach. Add in home environment, calibre of staff these schools can attract, tutoring... it's no surprise these schools shine in the league tables.

I'm actually a big fan of proper comprehensive education when it's done well. Selection, lack and inequality of funding and snobbery will seemingly always be a problem in this country though.

I live in a different county to you and none of the local comp schools round here post lists of alumni at all - illustrious or otherwise. It's just not the done thing. I'm quite sure they have their fair share of successful former students, they just don't go on about it. Or maybe they aren't even told. Two extremely successful and well-known household names went to my dc's school, but they aren't mentioned in the school prospectus or website.

A very good point.

There's also a cultural thing in that the successes of comprehensive pupils are much less likely to be attributed to their school than if they were at private or grammar schools.

The first person to gain admission to Cambridge from a Traveller background was continually described as having attended the "local school" - said school not being worthy of being named. No doubt if the pupil had attended a grammar school there would have been a Daily Mail editorial about it.

All three Finalists in Young Musician of the Year 2016 went to comprehensive schools but you had to do quite a lot of research to establish this.

Given that private school population is drawn almost exclusively from advantaged sections of society there's obviously going to be more of a concentration of "successful" people but it doesn't help when the successes of pupils at comprehensives never get attributed to their school.

very selective, elite, CofE comp

How is it comprehensive if selective?

I went to a big central London comp that took anybody! No selection, no religion, big standard uniform. Academic results were ok, education of “life” was amazing. Our catchment area included a large post-war sink estate and some of the most expensive real estate in London (Duchy of Westminster, including Belgravia). Tbh, we didn’t actually have that many pupils from Belgravia, but I was in the same year group as a hereditary Lord. My best friends dad worked in a chocolate factory though!

It's CofE, that's selective as it is! I lived well out of the area so would normally not have had a chance, but gained a place after sitting a language aptitute assessment. So, selective.

I think it is disingenuous to suggest any schools in London are or can be totally non-selective, when even as non-religious Comps, they admit on distance. Everyone knows that some areas have expensive houses which exclude many and are therefore effectively selective on income.

There are 'super Comps' in terms of attainment. They are often in very leafy areas, with a history of hig achievement and a reputation for it, meaning people plan for their schools years ahead by moving into catchment. The no of FSM and low prior attainment in these schools will be low.