"Top 5 in the country" GCSE results???

[WendyWeber]

One of our local schools (not selective) claimed in the local paper to have 2 pupils in the top 5 nationally for Eng Lit.

I just happened to be looking at the website for the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Herts this evening and they claim to have "3 girls placed in the top 5 nationally out of 365000 candidates for English Literature by the AQA Examinations Board".

Out of curiosity I googled "AQA Eng Lit GCSE top results" and found that Simon Langton Girls Grammar in Canterbury claim "2 in the top 5 out of 362,000 students who sat the AQA examination"

The Arthur Terry School in Sutton Coldfield claims 2 pupils "scored one of the top five marks in AQA English Literature from 365,000 candidates who entered the exam"

A Joseph Rowntree pupil in York was apparently in the top 5 for 3 subjects including Eng Lit. The same newspaper article reports that a pupil at Queen Margaret's School in Escrick

This is a very elastic top 5 . Anybody in education care to comment?

check out ermysteds skipton wendy = thay made claims this year

Ahh - have just reread some comments more carefully - it's the top 5 marks, isn't it, not the top 5 performers - there could be any number of students with the same mark.

OK. Panic over.

Bad reporting though.

(And very disingenuous of a private school to claim top 5 placement)

I think the top 5 is a BAND rather than a 'position' - so you might have more than one student who achieved the top mark or any of the other top five marks.

If I'm wrong probably MB or someone can explain better...

Thanks, Oenophile, I think you're right. The wording is misleading in some reports though (esp those from private schools )

yeah!! big up the socialism wendy - posy would aaprove

Yes, it's the top 5 marks, not the top 5 pupils. Sometimes you do read that a girl was one of the top 5 entrants which is a quite different thing.

"Sometimes" - but the Herts & Canterbury schools in my OP claimed 5 "top 5 students" between them! (Neither said top 5 marks, and those schools must surely know the difference - but their applicants probably won't )

(Posy would, wouldn't she, otter!)

I think the Eng. Lit. exam must have been relatively quite easy this year, or at least have had a large bulge at the top end. I know of one school that got 5 in the top 5 and another that got 7! Schools do rather gloss over the fact that it's the top 5 marks rather than the top 5 candidates, but it's still a good achievement. As I understand it, GCSE exams are marked out of 600 (after conversion to the uniform mark scale), so on the assumption that at least someone somewhere in the country will get full marks, anyone scoring UMS of 600, 599, 598, 597 or 596 is guaranteed to get a 'top 5' result. In other words 99.3% or above guarantees a top 5 and on an easy paper you might expect quite a lot nationally to achieve this.

dd's school is according to the Indpendent in the top 10 of the country but think that is purely comprehensive schools as opposed to the selective schools

"Twenty-five girls scored among the top 5 marks in the country and have received special letters from the AQA examination board."

This is how Simon Langton put it - I think "scored among ' is a hideous phrase, but I don't think it's ambiguous, is it?

Arthur Terry School in Sutton Coldfield is a fantastic school- massively oversubscribed though.

I would gladly live in a cardboard box in the catchment area to get my ds's into that school.

We have had children get these congratualtory letters, and I teach in a fairly bog standard comprehensive.

I'd love to take the credit, one got the letter for science But on ballence I rather think the child's ability and huge amount of hard work had a fair bit to do with it!

I have just succeeded in making DS's school change their website. It did claim a number of students were in the top 5 in the country, but now says the top 5 scores in the country. One student was in the top 5 for five subjects!