Please could you explain the different ways schools present their A-level results - very confused!

[dawndog]

Dear people of Mumsnet,

We're in the process of choosing a senior school for DD, who will start Year 7 in September 2023.

Attainment is not the only factor that matters but nonetheless an important one, so we're comparing the GCSE and A-level results of the schools that DD is applying to.

The GCSE results are straightforward enough to compare, as most schools seem to provide them in a % 9/8/7 format.

But for the A-level results it's more confusing as schools often only provide a partial picture. For example, some schools give the results as the % of A-B, while others the % of A-A: for the former, I would interpret this to mean the percentage of ALL A-levels taken by ALL pupils of that school which were graded B and above; for the latter, graded at A and above - is that correct?

Meanwhile, the government website provides the results in a % AAB format; I would interpret this to mean the percentage of individual pupils at that school who achieved AAB or higher although only in 'facilitating subjects' - is that correct?

Another thing that seems odd from the data is how some schools can have zillions of As and A*s, and sit at the top of the league tables, but the government figure (i.e. % AAB format) for that particular school is much lower, say in the 50s % or 40s %. Not sure how this can be?

Thanks for your help! Rachel

No particular knowledge, but I would assume that in the absence of mandatory statistics, schools will pick the statistics that show themselves in the best light.

Plus you must remember that different schools will have different criteria for acceptance to 6th form / onto specific A levels.

So what you really want to know is

• A level grades in the subjects your DC is specifically interested in
• Incoming grade profile of those pupils

A*-B was the most useful percentage when l was teaching A level.

Im not sure they publish progress, but these are available to schools.

I'm just thinking about your second question. I teach in an independent school. A lot of people (mainly those going into STEM degrees) will have 2+ "facilitating subjects" but an awful lot won't. Many of our brightest students take A levels which aren't on the list. (My DD, who is currently at art school, wouldn't have counted.) So if the %AAB figure is what percentage of the cohort tick those boxes, sometimes the most academic schools will fall foul of that!

When "facilitating subjects" first appeared they were presented as ones which keep your options open rather than narrow them down. I hadn't realised that they had crept into official data.

Also remember that lots of students switch schools for A levels so I wouldn’t make that a big deciding factor.

I think your understanding of what schools are presenting is correct. Not sure about the govt stats. But presumably the schools that say 75% got A-star -B will be able to back that up. I presume that will mean in all subjects btw.

Thank you all for your helpful replies. @Arse just out of interest, why is A-B more relevant than A-A?

@PhotoDad Yes I thought the 'facilitating subjects' bit would mean some schools wouldn't perform as well on the AAB metric as compared to %A-A / %A-B. However, what I can't understand is how they can drop 30 percentage points in some cases. The %AAB metric is tricky to find but it's available on the government website: you click through to the page where you can download the data in an Excel spreadsheet, then if you search <AAB> on the spreadsheet it is available for every school, whether state or private.

@dawndog Everyone on the secondary/higher education threads encounters the fact that the 'star' character is interpreted as 'start/stop' bold! Which is annoying.

I'll have a look at the data for my own school. It's got a very high A-star to B figure, but will be much lower for AAB in 2+ facilitating subjects, and I'd be interested to see by how much. I teach a non-facilitating subject myself, and thinking about my current sixth-formers, many of them have a second non-facilitating on their list so would disappear from the stats. Probably around 30% of them or more.

Apologies but something has gone wrong with my text with the letters appearing in bold instead of showing a star!

It should read: the percentage of A star to A / percentage of A star to B.

My own independent school, most recent stats: A-star to B is 90%.
%AAB in 2+ facilitating subjects is 55.6%.

This would be because my hunch of 30% taking only 1 f.s. was on the low side! Lots of clever students, especially those who already know what they want to do at uni, are taking Psychology, Economics, Ancient History, Philosophy, Art, EDT, Music, Drama, etc etc.

Please ignore the facilitating subjects stat - the concept of a facilitating subject is so narrow its meaningless.

Would you discount a school with lots of kids who got straight As in Maths, Economics and Politics and offers from the LSE for example? Because they won't appear in the AAB in at least two facilitating subjects stat.

@dawndog if you can wait until February, the government will be publishing national stats for A Level performance, in a consistent format across all providers: educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/06/22/were-changing-the-way-we-present-school-and-college-results-data-this-year-what-you-need-to-know-about-performance-tables/

Until then, it is down to each school to publish as they see fit.

I would focus on GCSE results and other measures for now, an awful lot can change in 5/6 years. Lots of teens choose to go to other 6th forms or colleges.

Unless the government says it is AAB in facilitating subjects, I would assume It is AAB across all subjects? Facilitating subjects are really not necessarily that important, and there are subjects which are academically challenging, or challenging in other ways that don't necessarily appear on the list.

But as has been said, I honestly wouldn't worry too much about A-level results when making Y7 school choice- there is usually a lot of movement after Y11. Your DD may even choose to go down a different route e.g. if she ends up very interested in art, or performing arts, other qualifications can be more suited to creating a portfolio for uni entry. Or she may want to go to a sixth form college etc.

You may also find that some schools which perform very highly at A-level prioritise A-level classes over KS3, whereas others which may not prioritise A-level as much look after KS3 students much better.

Obviously, very low A-level results might be indicative of a problem, but it's not a statistic I would personally use to choose a school for Y7.

Thanks all for your very helpful comments. So it seems that the % AAB metric is next to useless. Which begs the question why is it even reported on the govt tables? Thanks @demimore I will look out for that data in Feb - good they are making it possible to compare consistently (too late then to change much with school choices for Year 7 DD, but useful to know).

Another possibility is that the A-star to A metric, or the A-star to B metric, are both referring to the percent of all A-levels taken that were graded at those grades. The AAB metric could be the percentage of students who get AAB or higher, which could be very different as it's measuring all around performance of individual pupils. Ten students who all scored A, B, and C, for example, would result in a school with 33% of all exams graded A-star to A; 67% of exams graded at A-star to B; and 0% graded at AAB or higher.