Comparing schools - how?

[AnotherLongDay]

I’m just looking into look into schools for my DD for 2023 year 7. I’d like to compare a couple of nearby private schools and her catchment state school. I can’t find any info on things like exam results for the private schools - where can I find these? I’m assuming the state school results will be available but I’ve not searched for them yet.

Where can I read independent reviews of the private schools?

Thanks

@ you can subscribe to the good schools guide and the Sunday times publishes annual lists but it's up to the
Private schools re how they wish to distribute their exam data.

Would you be comparing like with like? Very hard to get independent information about a private school. You also have no idea of their intake as a baseline

As the parent of KS3 DC I'd focus on what schools suit your children and location etc. Once they get to high school they have to drive it. Data on the performance of other peoples kids becomes dubious and selection comes into play

Talking to parents of current and recent students at the private schools will give you some ideas about whether your DD would be happy and productive there. Attend open days with a cynical eye, and ask students to speak honestly and frankly about their school? Choose a school with a reasonable commute with subjects and extracurriculars she would enjoy. Get your daughter’s input, but make a decision based on your best interest.

If I paid good money to send my DC to a private school I would like to see how it compares with the state schools but it doesn't seem possible! Sorry, no help.

The private schools I've looked at have all had their results on their website.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/ is good for comparing state schools.

I agree that performance tables aren't particularly helpful if you are just looking at results and nothing else but I've found it quite enlightening digging into the data a bit. I've found that the local school, very sought after for it's art department, hasn't had a boy take art a level in 5 years, so we were able to ask about that. It;s also been useful is seeing where a schools strengths might lie, if they get 90% A or A* in sciences but only 55% ranking that well in languages, for instance.

Performance tables are meaningless for 2021 and 2020

One thing to be aware of when comparing private and state school exam results is that you might not be comparing like with like, if the private schools have selective admissions.

For state schools, the progress 8 score gives you a sense of how much progress students have made relative to the levels they were at at the end of primary school. So a school might not be top of the GCSE results tables if you focus on the % of students with top grades, but still be doing a better job of helping pupils progress than a school that gets a higher % of top grades, but for which most of its intake were above average attainers at the age of 11.

Unfortunately, there's no private school equivalent of the progress 8 score. Therefore, it's hard to appraise the extent to which a private school's exam results are the result of its teaching, or its admissions process leading to it having a cohort of very bright kids. You can do some intelligent guesswork, but there're no published stats that are easily compared between schools.

Private schools have to make their results available on their websites and their most recent Inspection report. Using the government comparison site won’t give you the right info as it won’t include any international GCSEs which most private schools seem to do, so the results can look awful for private schools on that site but in reality it’s just because not all GCSEs are shown.

While there are no Progress 8 schools for independent schools at GCSE there is for A-level on the gov.uk site. I looked into this for a few schools (2 state and 2 independent) in SW London a couple of years ago when we were choosing. It was interesting that there was no difference between state and independent Progress 8 scores at least for those schools. But of course that might be different to where you live OP.

I thought performance stats weren't being published for 2020 and 2021? That appears to be the case in the state sector at least.

Yes that's right. Latest data is for 2019. The recent news that suggests many independent schools gamed the system in 2021 is interesting with quite extraordinary increases in 8s and 9s compared to 2019. If they use 2021 GCSEs as the basis for A-level value added scores in 2023 then you would expect those schools that appeared to game the system to have very negative value added scores at A-level. Unfortunately this makes the value added data fairly useless for both comparing within the independent sector and also comparing state and independent schools. Just shows what the incentive structures are for independent schools in the absence of regulation / proper oversight. State schools parents with kids applying for university places last year must be apoplectic.