Choosing secondary for 2023 - to ignore stats and go off the behaviour and ‘niceness’ of the kids? Opinions please.

[MinionMinion]

Hello. So DS will transfer to secondary in 2023 so we’ve started looking/investigating. I’ve been keeping an eye on the schools for the past couple of years and actually went to the open evenings on my own last year to just get a feel of them/shortlist without DS around.

I work a lot in the community and involved with local scouts/youth groups/outdoors groups. I meet hundreds of children every week from different schools/backgrounds/walks of life etc. What I notice the most is the behaviour and attitude to learning is massively different between the kids from different schools. And before it’s said, it doesn’t seem to correlate to family background/council estate/own their own home etc. It seems to be the school in general.

Our closest school (school A) seems to have the worst behaviour and also the kids just don’t seem to want to learn but has the best results/OFSTED. School A have been banned from a local museum because of the behaviour of the children.

But a school (school B) further away (40/50 mins walk/bus combo) has lovely kids, they all want to learn, they are kind helpful and generally really positive towards trying new things. However, school B have some of the lowest results in the area but have a good OFSTED.

There’s also a school C (30 min walk) which seems to have hectic misbehaving Y10/11s who don’t know how to learn but Y7 who seem to love the place and are really positive and love getting involved. Y8/9 are somewhere in the middle. However, the mismanagement of the school a few years ago, the forced closure, the trust management scandal and the huge turn around recently with nice new management in a well regarded trust might account for this.

We have 5 other schools which are ruled out either because we just won’t get a place as they are either too oversubscribed, or, over my dead body, although I am planning on putting at least one of the oversubscribed schools on the list.

I appreciate this sounds a bit weird. But I just really think positive behaviour and a love of learning are more important than results and a really bad attitude/don’t care attitude towards others.

My DC went to a school a long way away that was just "nice", friendly, everyone was smiling. Best decision we ever made. Ofsted results mean nothing if your child is unhappy and doesn't want to go to school. They've just done GCSEs and hoping to get the grades to go back for A levels

I went with the head teacher I thought was serious about standards of behaviour and everyone's ability to contribute. Serious in general, in fact. I didn't regret it.

Is school C not improving, from what you say?? does that have good results or you can’t see the turn yet?

I’d get meetings with school C and ask them how they support kids who have the potential to do well. And with school B I’d ask the head how they think they will do abs based on what. Try and see the heads if you can, they have a huge influence.

I’d be wary of school C if your child is academically able, however nice it is, he may get bored which isn’t good for him, and results do matter up to a point.

I have a feeling school C is improving massively from the school gate gossip and from what I’m seeing with all the things I’m involved with. School C is too new to be OFSTED’ed yet. Although one is expected within a year or so, as in late 22/23 academic year or early 23/24 academic year. No results yet because of COVID, first results expected this year. It became the new academy under the new management in December 2019 so not sure whether this years results will really tell us anything about how things are going.

School B is very stable, it’s always been a good, friendly, caring school which produces really well rounded children and dedicated teachers who go the extra mile, but never the best results (although they aren’t appalling, there are just schools with better results in this area, one of which will make it to the list. There are also schools with much much worse which I’ve already discounted and not just for results reasons).

B is currently the better one out of B and C for behaviour, attitude to learning and getting the kids involved with things outside of the classroom, but, like it’s been said, school C could be catching up quickly.

I’ll certainly ask to speak to the heads to see what they are like, how they support all ability ranges, their policies/plans towards behaviour and discipline, attitude to learning/engaging kids, other questions I have about the day to day life of the school and DS related specifics.

I’m planning on trying to see if we can do an in-the-day visit in September sometime to all the schools that make the shortlist (planning on a shortlist of 4 or 5 - does this seem sensible?) to see them in action.

I chose the school that had really happy, well-behaved pupils and it's worked out brilliantly for us.

It's one of the only life decisions I've made that I don't regret. :-D

I think you'll find out a lot with school visits. We went for one with slightly worse (but still really good tbf) results and slightly worse behaviour because it was closer and my child would have a close community of friends than the one further away but neither decision would have been wrong. Think about how they are going to get to school and the time involved/cost too.

Yes looking at kids is good

Also talk to someone on senior leadership team

I chose DS school on these things and vibe rather than Ofsted, and don’t regret that at all

Avoid A. If they are banned from a museum, then the behaviour problem is serious. Is the behaviour something that is recent? If so this will impact on results at some point (probably). When facing something like this then, yes, I would choose behaviour and attitudes over results any day.

School B sounds like one you should definitely consider putting on your shortlist.

School C sounds like one you should definitely be considering. There are lots of changes going on and for the better is what it sounds like. I think you are right regarding this years GCSE results. Too soon for the new management to have kicked in and also C-19 will have massively impacted. However, if they have improved despite this, definitely consider it closely.

From what you are saying you seem to already have a shortlist which includes school B, school c and one other oversubscribed one. Looking at what you are saying, 4 would be enough, 5 more than enough. I would throw another one in just for the comparison, or, throw school A in to see what’s really going on or if big changes are about to happen/have happened.

You seem very involved with your local community so I would say go with your instincts as you probably have contact with children and schools more than most other parents, therefore, are in a position to see what all schools produce and how they interact on occasions which aren’t just a few hours on a Wednesday night in September.

When you say 'results' are you looking at headline gcse pass rates, or actually looking at the progress8 scores?

It’s great to hear so many would choose behaviour and attitude over results. It’s giving me confidence in my gut feelings.

Although I’ve looked at results and progress 8, I put a lot more on behaviour and attitudes, good enthusiastic teachers, happy atmosphere which rewards all levels of achievement as long as effort has been put into it, and getting the kids involved with educational things outside the classroom. I believe engaged, well behaved children with a want to learn always do well as it sets a good foundation to work from.

@TeenDivided , looked mainly at progress 8 and headline but have done some digging into the breakdown of prior attainment levels for progress 8 and GCSE%, boy/girl split at % GCSE pass (to see if it was broadly similar), and some other numbers which I can’t remember what they are called on the government comparison website.

School A definitely the best in all areas from the ‘guaranteed place’ schools, but there are better among the oversubscribed schools. School B isn’t that bad just, not brilliant. It does just as well with all attainment groups. School C I can’t tell. There’s been too many changes to take the 2019 results from that school (well, the predecessor school) as anywhere near meaningful.

Appreciate results are also extremely outdated as well. Quite glad there are going to be some published this year.

To clarify the above, I wasn’t saying B’s results and progress 8 for the ability bands was the the same as A’s.

School A is best with results and progress 8 overall even within the different ability bands but the progress 8 for each ability band is different, some very different.

School B is has the same (or very similar) progress 8 for all ability levels within their school.

Why would a school with nicely behaved, eager to learn children get poor GCSE results though?

Because they are academically less able on average?

School A has the rep of good results (did they always use banding?), so attracts lots of higher ability applicants and perhaps something about it puts the parents of lower ability DC off. It uses banding, but can only band with what it gets offered. So average ability higher than it would be with a full and numbers-wise more balanced range of applicants and even clever little sods get better results at GCSE than not so clever well behaved DC, and parents just look at the results, and so it goes on.

School B, rep for being a nice, caring school, attractive to parents of not so bright, but on the whole lovely kids all trying hard to 'be the best they can be' (as so many schools seem to have as their motto these days), but with the best will in the world, they are never all going to come out with a full set of 9s, 8s, or possibly even 5s at GCSE.

I have no idea where the OP lives or which schools we are talking about, naturally, just putting forward a hypothesis.

Unless it was definitely only the one year group involved in the museum ban, I would only go for that school if it was my only hope of not being forced to home educate in year 7, personally.