Charter School North Dulwich-- Better than Indies for Gifted and Talented

[LondonGirl83]

I was looking up some information the Charter School North Dulwich's Gifted and Talented programme.

This is our local state school and their website claims that 100% of this cohort who are streamed together in a specialist programme achieve at least 10 GSCEs at A/A* and 100% get at least AAA for A-levels.

To get into the stream it appears you need to be around 5a in year 6 SATs which is very selective (probably somewhere around top 5%?) but even so that would have it outperforming pretty much every independent school in the country for this intake.

I knew it was already one of the top non-selective comps in the country but I had know idea gifted kids did so well here. Does anyone have a child in this programme that can say if its really as good as they are claiming?

www.charternorthdulwich.org.uk/news/?pid=15&nid=4&storyid=15

Dozer no, the wealth doesn't matter. My point is private schools full of rich children don't get results that good who select the top 10% in attainment at 11. That's why the claim is so striking.

Do you have a link to the A/A breakdown? I would be interested to know how it compares to the only independent I know of that gets pretty much 100% A and A at GCSE.

I disagree that parental wealth makes no difference. How can it not? At the most basic level children who have warm clean homes, enough to eat, and a quiet space to do their homework in are massively advantaged compared to children who have none of these things.

I'm saying it makes no difference to the stats seeming striking. Given private schools are also full of (even more) wealthy people, it would be surprising in any case that the Charter was able to outperform many of the most selective private schools in the country for its cohort that was a similar ability intake.

I don't have the breakdown for Charter's G&T cohort beyond what they've posted at the link I shared. The whole school statistics are on all the normal league tables. As a comp (meaning for all their cohorts not just G&T), they still have very impressive results and value add scores.

I'm not questioning if its a good school but just if there is something important missing in their marketing pitch about how well their G&T cohort perform.

I've seen the whole school stats. They are a little less good than the best comprehensive near me (similarly selective in terms of wealth). Interestingly, the comprehensive near me doesn't set at all until GCSE courses begin, I think, nor do they give any information about how the top few percent perform though their overall scores are better on all counts.

There doesn't seem much information on the site about this particular set or sets of kids. The number of children leaving at 16 last year was 178. 5% of that is 9 children, if we are calling children with 5a in SATs the top 5%. 100% of 9 children doing really really well is actually not at all the same as eg 95% of 100 children doing really really well. Or indeed 100% of 100 children doing really really well. So I am a bit sceptical about how good this provision actually is.

I'm sure it's a good school but I'm not sure that stat is as impressive as it sounds if it only applies to 9 or 10 children. And if you take only the top 5% of the cohort's results I bet lots of comprehensives could match it.

It’s not necessarily 5 percent of the school that would be getting 5a. Hitting level 5c-5a equates to the top 10-5 percent for attainment nationally. In Dulwich / Herne Hill up to 30 percent of pupils in year 6 perform in the top 10 percent nationally in year 6 SATS in many primaries so the cohort is likely to be a good size unless most of those kids leave state education for indies at secondary level.

From those with experience of the school it sounds like they are just potentially playing around with the definition of the cohort since it’s so loosely defined.

Isn’t charter much bigger than most private schools? So will have a large cohort of academic DC.

Also, most private schools don’t select the top 10%, except for the most competitive London ones perhaps.

Years ago I went to a large comprehensive with quite a diverse intake and there was a good sized cohort of DC who got top grades. No “gifted and talented” programme. No “setting” apart from maths. Had pros and cons IME but can well believe that a large London comprehensive with a sizeable intake of wealthy DC would include similar/higher attaining “cohort”.

I would be very interested to know how they are identifying children who got 5a in their SATs, given that that has not been possible for some years now!

I can't remember which year group was the first to get the the 'new SATs reporting', but DS2 is in yr12 (not in London, although I used to live in the general area under discussion many moons ago, but I digress) and he had the old 'levels'. The level 6 was there to be had in his year and for at least 2 years prior to that, as well. My point being that all the DC about whom one can report that x% got 10 A* at GCSE / amazing grades at A level would actually have had SATs reported as e.g. '5a' etc.

If you're talking about 10 or so kids, then coming up with an impressive stat is just picking your best one. I've been looking through stats for local secondaries and it's amazing how they all trumpet different figures, high achievers Eng maths grades vs Ebacc achieved by all vs levels of grade 8 and 9... Look at Ofsted and they're pretty similar.

Basically there is clearly a bright cohort attending, who generally do well, but that's all you can really say. From my own experience and now ds (bright and autistic), the best school assuming the above is the one your kid is wiling to attend and happy to work in.

Yeah I agree, I think there’s a high possibility that the school just chose their top 10 performers by attainment and put some marketing narrative around it.
This is not a criticism of Charter, neither is it an indication that they don’t provide strong monitoring and support for ALL children as SW16 mentioned.

Charter is simply responding to parental demand and focus on GCSE results in the best way that it can, given its comprehensive context but highly selective neighbouring indie schools.

With strong parental/pastoral support and excellent teaching throughout teenage years, it’s not radical to predict that a high prior attaining pupil at KS2 will fulfil their potential with level 7-9s at GCSE.

Yes, I agree with all of that except that their performance would beat the local indies that do select the top 5-10 percent which is why I’m sceptical and think they are cherry picking within the cohort or skewing the stats by narrowing the analysis to few exams than actually taken (10 GCSEs reported vs 12 taken so they are using the best 10 versus the total).

Those results statistically would be more than achieving the cohorts potential.

The Charter results at 100 percent of the cohort would be better than St Paul’s Girls much less indies selecting the top the top 10 percent.

Your instinct is probably correct. So sad that Charter feel the need to game presentation of their results in this way.
Hope you get answers here next week - I’m very curious too. Have a lovely Sunday.

The Charter results at 100 percent of the cohort would be better than St Paul’s Girls

Well, not necessarily. As I wondered before, it does depend a bit on how the A*/A split lies.

spgs.org/academic/results/gcse-results/

DS2 is in yr12 (not in London, although I used to live in the general area under discussion many moons ago, but I digress) and he had the old 'levels'

Thanks! I could not remember either. All I can remember is that by the time it was relevant to DD (Y8) levels had gone. But it is a strange thing to have on your website. Any parent of a child applying now will not have the first idea what a level 5a means - all they will likely know is that it's an out of date descriptor.

There is no g&t stream and has never been one in terms of separate teaching. Perhaps someone keeps a record of how those identified as g&t are doing but in practice it’s just getting to do mandarin/Latin/extra maths/science etc. And being in the top set for those subjects that set. No idea how it compares to other local schools but there are undoubtedly a huge number of very able students given it’s a comprehensive. Obviously also normal range of less able too and of course it’s not equivalent to St Paul’s girls!

Friend whose child goes to Charter hadn’t heard of it. Her kids are happy and learning Is all she’s said.

Think the page is a bit of a marketing spin.

I wonder where the idea that it was a separate stream came from?

Glaciferous St Pau;'s Girls isn't at 100%, which is my point...

Thanks for those who looked into this and commented who have experience of the school. It definitely seems to be marketing spin which makes much more sense

And my point was, if you look at the link, that 96% of the SPGS GCSE entries get A. However, you are right, the percentage at A plus A is 99.5% (I don't think 0.5% is statistically very relevant here; it means 6 grade Bs out of 1210 entries).

That page is an archived news article from 2013 so presumably bears little relation to what’s going on at Charter now anyway, so probably isn’t going to give you much useful insight if you’re trying to find out what the school would be like for a high attaining child joining now. You’d be better off looking at what the website says about MAT (the current acronym) and looking at the exam results breakdown to see what % of the cohort are getting top grades.

@LondonGirl83

hugo yes all children do well there - it’s one of the top comps in the country with very high value add scores across the board.

No indies including those selecting a similar cohort get 100 percent A / A*. While being top 5-10 percent means your most likely grade is an A, statistically speaking within a cohort group there is still a good sized probability of some Bs.

I’m asking mostly as I’m curious on how they school is making the claim. It seems like they are leaving something out. Do kids take more than 10 GCSE’s for instance or are 4 A-levels typical?

Hi do SEN children do well - secondary schools do not seem to keep figures on how well children on the SEN register do?