Feedback on Grey Court School , Ham (Richmond)

[sdk2022]

Hello Everyone
I have recently moved to the UK and currently residing in Ham (Richmond) area. My daughter is on a waitlist for Kingston Academy and at Tiffin Girls School. For Tiffin School I know the wait is much longer as she will need to give an entrance exam which has been scheduled for 1st Dec as of now. Kingston Academy she is on top in the list but still not sure how long the wait will be. Meanwhile, we have been offered a space at Grey Court school - I would sincerely appreciate an honest feedback about this school? How are the teachers? Is it a good mix of students? Academically do they pay attention to the children? Etc Etc

I'm very apprehensive and want her to have a good and healthy experience especially with such a big change. It's not been easy. I took this house especially to be 7 mins away from Kingston Academy and yet have been on waitlist - have approached Richmond and Kingston Council , written emails to schools etc but we will just have to wait it out. So i just want to know if Grey Court School is a good option to put her in meanwhile. Thank you

We have lots of friends and family at greycourt, all of whom are happy with it. Its a large school set in lovely grounds, head is passionate and seems to have a great track record of raising the game of the school and is ambitious for it. Its a big school though and like others have said that brings highs and lows. We've got one in Tiffin, if she gets a place I would definitely take it. No contest. Its a great educational experience for the right child

A very small number of school refuseniks can have a very significant impact on schools' Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores. Students don't need to be disruptive to have an impact, just absent! Schools with consistently high results are adept at managing them out by Year 9, because they know Ofsted looks very closely at the profile of leavers in Years 10 and 11 and asks questions. Kinder, more inclusive schools do what they can to engage these kids and encourage them back into the classroom, but often its a lost cause, and the school's overall results suffer for it. So when you look at headline results, it is always worth considering that they are averages, and they mask a lot of individual circumstances. School's results that swing up and down from year to year are a sign of outliers in their cohorts, e.g. students who don't turn up for any of their exams, or have missed a substantial chunk of teaching time. (The DfE does allow some outliers to be discounted, but the criteria are very stringent).

@infinitwisdom but we can always look at the gov page for a specific school and find out how the low attainers performer vs middle and achievers. It is all there including proportion of rsch group.

I have lots of friends with children at GC who are very happy. I would choose it over kingston accademy, it has a higher progress 8 score and higher attainment 8 score.

@3WildOnes that may be the case at the moment but TKA is doing very well and fast on the heels of Greycourt. Give a few more years and I will bet it does as well if not exceeds the results of Greycourt. Among people I know TKA is proving to be more popular - although these things are cyclical. Ultimately, they are both fantastic schools and I would be happy for my dc to go to either school.

If you ask enough people you find someone to say something negative about both schools - but the vast majority have a great experience at these schools. And I said earlier as it isn't really a choice but a preference you need to be happy with your child to going to either.

Not really. The definition of a high/medium/low attainer in that context is a child who performed well/middling/poorly in their Year 6 SATs. A lot can happen to a child between Year 6 and Year 11. Any child who goes off the rails, e.g. with mental health issues, or family trauma, and misses a lot of school, can have an impact on results. If high performers go off the rails it obviously has a much bigger impact on progress scores than if low performers go off the rails. But that will tell you very little about how your own high/medium/low performing child would have done in the same cohort.

The behaviour of students on the 371 bus is abysmal. My heart sinks when I see Grey Court students getting on. I once over heard a conversation between students there bragging that they'd beaten the shit out of another boy in their class. Nice school.

@infinitwisdom not sure what you mean. It shows how those kids qualified earlier at KS2 as low, middle and high...performed then at various criteria around GCSE. Attached is the pic from Twickenham School

@JustWingItLifeEyelinerEverything well the first thing to note about that cohort is that it only had 75 students (very few for a secondary school) and only 9 of them were high attainers when baselined by their SATS scores at the end of Y6. It would only need one of those high attainers to suffer a long term illness or life event that caused them to miss a lot of school, and it would have an enormous impact on not only their own GCSE results but also the average A8/P8 figures for the school.

I think that can happen in any school and not only in Twickenham School 😂

Also, one can only draw conclusion about data from the school by observing data for several years and not only a random year.

Btw a nearby Twickenham School is another school, Hampton High that had a very bad year. The Progress 8 went down down and is now well below the average and the headmistress left the school

Of course it can happen in any school. But it will have a bigger impact in smaller schools, and in kinder schools that don't manage out troubled kids in Year 9, and in the schools that have to take in those managed-out kids.

By the way, I have no connection to Twickenham School. I'm just challenging your faith in data, because I work in a (different) school and see from the inside what influences it from year to year.

So are you saying that decision about schools should not be based at all on data?

I personally believe that a data from few years shows trend

No, but there is no need to be absolutist about it or to use it as a stick to bash other people's decisions with. Maybe relax a bit, and stop implying your choices are superior just because they're based on data. They're really not.

Which school's headmistress has left? Rebecca Poole still seems to be Head of Hampton High and its been about 4 or 5 years now.

Don't be so dramatic 😂.Did I force you to do as I say? No Everybody is entitled to his opinion which I merely expressed.

@Meredusoleil I heard from an insider that she recently dissapeared. Please read one of the more recent newsletters to the parents that you can find on their website.

@infinitwisdom apart from discouraging people to use the data in their decision ( read: a stick to bash other people's decisions who wanted to use data ) are you also discouraging people to rely on anything Ofsted produced? 😂 And therefore are you encouraging to listen to what biased opinions and rely on show off open days?

You're not forcing anyone to do anything - you don't need to - you just need to subtly undermine their confidence by suggesting the school their child will go to (whether by choice or not) is inferior to others. Your comment on Hampton High above is an example - a sneaky little gossip grenade.

Fwiw, Waldegrave's head "disappeared" last year too - she had cancer treatment - then she came back. It happens. Schools cope. Hampton High is part of a large academy trust who will swoop in and keep things running smoothly, while the deputy holds the fort.

A few months ago people were worrying about Twickenham School's head leaving but, guess what, they now have another and he looks good.

Some of these schools have been through difficult times and come out the other end, but there will always be pernicious parents, with undermining comments, ready to give them anything from a little poke to a hefty shove on social media. Their kids say the same and worse to their classmates in the playground, which is horrible for the children who are allocated one of the less popular schools.

Ofsted reports are ok if you know how to read them, but they are just snapshots from a couple of days - often several years in the past - and the framework they judge schools by changes regularly, with every new Ofsted chief exec. Schools are still getting used to the sweeping changes made by Amanda Spielman in 2019 (which decoupled Ofsted rating from results, focussed on curriculum quality, and made it much more difficult to get an Outstanding grade), but the new guy who will be taking over in the new year looks set to reverse them. So one Outstanding grade (for example) doesn't mean the same as another.

Having been involved in the inspection process muultiple times, I know that a lot also depends on the personality of the lead inspector and whether they have an agenda.

@infinitwisdom and you unsubtly undermine data and Ofsted efforts to gather it.
So what you are actually saying.That I should send to Twickenham School my DC next year instead of Orleans because data doesn't matter? No, thank you.

Abot HH, not what I heard from a person working ther, but you will see in due course.

And that comment about children allocated to less popular schools- Have you noticed that equality is not something typical.to capitalism? For a starter look at the grammar schools, housing prices around great comprehensives.

You don't know if anybody will reverse any Ofsted reports. Thank God they are demistyfing Outstanding schools

Ofsted report is not a rocket science.

I gather you worked for a school that had not the best GCSE scores. i am judging basing on all talk that bad scores are actually not bad 😂

No, I actually work for one of the schools you like. 🙂 But local schools support each other (perhaps more than local parents do, it sometimes seems). There are good networks between the staff at local schools.

The incoming Ofsted Chief Exec has been vocal in his criticism of the current inspection regime, so unless he bangs his head between now and January 1st, a consultation is likely to follow soon after.

Yeah, so the Outstanding schools will be again "untouchable" for 10 years or more and racist and abusive grammars will not be downgraded as some were in the last few years. Shame. Fictional inspections again.

I would love to see Twickenham accademy or Hampton high turn around but presently they are not great schools. The behaviour at both is appaling compared to other local schools.

No, I don't think he'll reverse the position on untouchable outstanding schools, but he may reverse the focus on a high quality curriculum and re-peg grades to results: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/leading-ceos-new-ofsted-inspections-favour-middle-class-kids/

It's not called Twickenham Academy any more, it"s called Twickenham School, and it is rated "Good" by Ofsted. Children do well there, but they currently have a disproportionate number of troubled kids.