The all-new 2007 League Tables are out !

[paulayatesbiggestfan]

Top GCSE

Top A-Level

I love perusing them !

I don't, sadly. This year the London Borough my family lives in is BOTTOM of the London league .
But yes, they make interesting reading!

Thanks Paula, your on the ball

sorry about that marina - bloody interesting read..

My DS is in a top 10 school!

congatulation millways which is it?

Are there any surprises there? Schools that moved dramatically up or down?

DS is no.7 on GCSE list

i am not sure but these seem significantly different to some other tables posted on here at the end of last year

checking out your school now milliways

No idea about score for last year, but at a quick glance, am a bit surprised to see St Paul's in London is not closer to the top.

I think that most will have lower results than in previous years as the % of A-C is now those pupils who achieved 5 GCSEs including English and Maths.

Our local school has significantly slipped and has been overtaken by some schools which I had always thought to be a bit ropey.

My boys' school has dropped significantly because of the inclusion of maths in the league tables. Their reall score is 100%, but because the top mathematicians do the more rigorous IGCSE, they don't rate.

All the independents that do iGCSEs instead of GCSEs in maths or English or Science won't appear on the GCSE lists.

Also schools that insist students do General Studies and/or Critical Thinking as extra A levels possibly to inflate their A level scores will appear higher up the A level lists too.

PYBF I think the lists you are thinking of excluded Gen Studies/Crit Thinking A's and included iGCSEs

too right snorkle - my boys school comes up as 0% of pupils getting 5 good GCSE's inc maths and english - makes it really hard for parents who don't know the score to find out.

omg i cannot keep up
what are Igcses

International GCSEs

this article reckons results are up because schools are steering away from harder subjects like languages.

if my son has not mentioned the i bit does that mean he is not doing them? (dumb emotion)

PYBF they are only done at independent schools. The key difference seems to be that iGCSEs tend not to have coursework whereas GCSEs do.

Everyone says they are harder, but I think it's just the content that is harder (closer to A level, especially in maths) When our school introduced them they said there'd been studies that showed kids wouldn't get lower marks which tends to suggest it's a difference in curriculum, but marked to about the same standard.

ok that explains that!

thanks snorkle - are they realy harder or just private schools bleating?

I can only speak for maths which is the only one they do at our school and the only one I've looked at.

The iGCSE covers harder stuff like calculus and the exam did look harder to me. But they don't have to do any coursework (which iGCSE proponents say is boring, time-consuming and easy to plagerise) so that frees up more teaching time to cover the extra stuff. So the exam is harder but counter-balanced by lack of coursework. It looks to me like iGCSE is a better preparation for A-level.

But if, as was alleged, the children don't actually get lower marks when they take iGCSE then I assume the thresholds are lower so that the exams have harder content but are not more difficult to pass. Does that make sense?

Why do they bother about saying where your local authority is overall? Surely people don't care - they only want a good school. Knowing your authority is the 25th best in the country must be scant comfort if your catchment school is a shit-hole and well below the national average.

Conversely, it's quite perversely comforting to know that there are hell-hole schools in our poorly-performing authority which you are never in a million years going to have to send your kids to.

Selfish? You bet.

Admit it, some of you think like this too. Which is why the "gap" is never going to improve. People want bad schools. They just don't want them to be the ones their kids go to.

TBH, I was rather smug when the primary school results came out not long back when I compared DD's old school to her new school

It's not private school's bleating, PY. It's just a fact. If private schools cared about league tables, they would do the standard GCSEs, and let some of their pupils down.

An astute parent who is looking for the right school for their child will at least look at the school's own website, where the truth will be revealed.

no science teacher i do agree with you..
i am all in favour of gcse's toughening up a wee bit

Disagree, unquiet. I don't want any bad schools, if at all possible. I'm very happy with ds's but would be delighted if every other child in the country got to go to a good school, too.