What a screwup at NLCS

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Anyone else read this?

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/24/north-london-collegiate-school-investigated-a-level-grades-2021-malpractice-allegations

Appalling stupidity and lack of professional integrity. No wonder the Head has resigned.

mbell, that is a good post; thank you. It may be that I came from a home and school environment where I was at a fee paying school and exams were important etc and my parents had been to state grammars so perhaps some of the homework requirements (which are not really that much at NLCS) seem a lot compared with others who did not have that themselves as a child. I don't know. We found a box we hid as a family in the 1970s when our parents extended our house when the new owners after our parents died opened it up and my description of myself aged about 11 was a list of all my exam passed from music to speech a drama gym on and on and on... I am laughing at myself here.

Certainly our experience from age 7 to 18 with my daughter was there were some girls in each class who had to be best of the best and were perfectionists. You will find that in every school in the land. There would also in other case be some parents pressurising a child, as you get everywhere, telling them off for getting A not A star, and some more laid back (which is probably us although we certainly made sure homework and music practice was done and drove them to sports and went to parents' evenings etc). Some girls are so bright they don't have to do much work at all. Others as teenagers in every school at times go off the rails, out late, not working enough lazy as sin... Just a mixture.

I am sorry you have heard over and over again from other parents their daughters have not been happy. My daughter obviously had lots of happy friends there (and probably a few who weren't). It is certainly not easy being a teenage girl wherever you are. I though the emphasis on hobbies and the rounded girl was just right and so many nice hobbies from which to choose that most girls could find that one thing they adored. Plenty make friends for life.

Anyway I have no skin in this game now as it is my grandchildren who are starting school now and my youngest children are just finishing university stage. Miss Buss and Miss Beale I hope, if they are looking down on us, will continue to be proud of the school they founded. I re-read last year a trilogy by Molly Hughes who wrote about her Victorian childhood and later life and describes her starting at NLCS in the 1800s. It was also fascinating to see the life of a child in Victorian England including in London and also even the visits by train to see the family in Cornwall. Very interesting triology

www.amazon.co.uk/VICTORIAN-FAMILY-1870-1900-Molly-Hughes/dp/B000XS8NUS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ACQ09EPK5C66&keywords=molly+hughes&qid=1672581485&sprefix=molly+hughes%2Caps%2C244&sr=8-1

Just out of interest is the school nurse at NLCS still a lady from New Zealand ?

I’m sure they’ll continue successfully churning out anxious high achievers with a higher than average incidence of eating disorders. Money well spent.

That's what they do best.

Maybe the school has listened and they are doing something about it?
That's why there is not so much academic pressure in Year 7 but emphasis on Sports/Drama/Art? Not much homework/testing.
But in general if you look at schools, when you reach the Sixth Form, the demands/expectations are very high. And more and more schools are encouraging independent study. And you are expected to do a minimum of 3 hours homework daily on your academic subjects.

But in general if you look at schools ....you are expected to do a minimum of 3 hours homework daily on your academic subjects.
Perhaps in the bubble you are living in. As I said, the most competitive UK universities have predominantly students from schools which do not set that amount of daily homework, even in sixth form. Having evenings swallowed up by 3 hours of homework is IMO more likely to stifle self motivated supracurricular exploration. In addition I would also be concerned that 3 hours would turn into much longer for a DC with perfectionist tendencies.

You don't need to do three hours of homework every night after school to do well academically. A school where that is necessary is failing in its teaching. The effects of that kind of pressure on young people who may already be dealing with perfectionism and fear of failure can be dangerously destructive.

@pointythings and @sendsummer I agree, particularly around suppressing natural intellectual supra-curricular activity. The comment from @123DS is so depressing. The idea that 3 hours homework is good as it prevents kids 'getting private tuition' or 'being on social media' is tragic on so many levels. There are a great deal of worthwhile things a child can be doing with the time they would have back that would bring joy and fulfilment.

Even the Good Schools guide review, following interviews with parents, makes the place sound like a pressure cooker, which is very unusual for them. They actually said they'd been informed 'girls needed to tough to survive here' in the review'!

@MomFromSE both my DDs did that much in most of their last year at school, and that includes DD2 who did A levels in 2021 - their ordinary state 6th form worked them hard. But it was driven by them and it ywasn't homework for the sake of it. I also made sure they carried on with their hobbies and stayed in touch with friends and family on (gasp!) social media. Everything in moderation, common sense applied.

If you are in the sixth form you usually study 3 A Level subjects. When you are at school you will normally have free periods . That time can be used for independent study/ homework/ extracurricular activities. It is not that you have lessons like the lower years. Many students find it hard to organise their time wisely. This is where a nurturing school will step in and offer support, for example in providing supervised study periods. A levels are very demanding and if you want top grades you need to put the time and effort. And of course you need to be interested in the subject you are studying - some students are making wrong choices and end up unmotivated. Again, here is something a school can do something about it, to allow students to switch courses early on and help them to make the correct choices.

As a parent of the school, we couldn’t be happier with the teaching at NKCS and my daughter, in year 10, isn’t under pressure, nor does she have an eating disorder, she’s a happy, confident, healthy child who isn’t stressed. She doesn’t have “ hours” of homework and commutes by coach. The head resigned for personal reasons and I would suggest there’s quite a lot of jealously from parents on here and spite. There aren’t lots of children leaving the junior school, some go on to board and St Pauls and If you look at the recent exam results you would see outstanding results, some of the best in the country and parents have all had communication from the school to say no findings of malpractice and no downgrading of marks.

@PPLs thanks for sharing your DD's personal experience at the school. It's reassuring to know that at least some of the girls are having a good experience at the school despite the headlines. Indeed, the exam results look okay.

www.nlcs.org.uk/userfiles/nlcsmvc/pdfs/2022%20Results%20for%20marketing%20and%20evaluation%20(1).pdf

It's so confusing to know what's going on at NLCS. Previously, I would have said that if DD gets an offer it's a foregone conclusion we'd accept it. Now, I'm not so sure. We definitely need to do our due diligence here. Thanks all for your helpful input.

My daughter joined in year 7, she couldn’t be happier, I am not aware of any unhappy parents in our wide circle of friends. Pastoral care is paramount and the teaching is great. The headline is nothing about unhappy children, it’s about an investigation into results, none of which where upheld nor downgraded. I suspect a large amount of jealousy on this forum. 2021 NLCS had the best IB marks in the world and these were all externally marked. My daughter doesn’t have three hrs homework, she has regular end of topic tests, but where doesn’t. She’s still able to do extra curricular activities, she’s in debating, public speaking and Model UN. A happy, healthy child in a supportive and stimulating environment with a super set of teachers and girls.

I'm intrigued. Where did you get those IB rankings from?

NLCS isn't on this list at all:
smapse.com/best-schools-in-england-by-ib-2021-ranking/

And here are the global rankings for 2022, where NLCS is 16th:
www.ib-schools.com/league-tables/global-top-ib-schools

G&L has, I believe, topped the UK IB rankings for some years now. (I'm not a G&L parent btw! But we did turn down NLCS at 4+ because we didn't like the culture. Just a personal thing - what's right for one family / child isn't always right for another).

I totally understand that parents feel protective of the school their child goes to (I would be the same in your position) but it's also important to get our facts straight.

@LondonMum20222 good question, where are the global IB rankings? I'm curious to see them in general. ta

@londonupnorth I put the link in my post above!

Oh, thanks! You are right, NLCS is only the 5th best school in the UK. Interesting.

Schools pay to go on lists. NLCS scored 43 in 2021. I am dipping out of this, we are super happy where we are. I am sure everyone has much better things to do than speculate about schools your children either aren’t in or didn’t get into.

They were 16th. You said they were first. That's just untrue. Their score is published in the list I linked to.

Not sure why you're getting so defensive. 16th globally is - by any objective standard - still amazing. But you can't keep arguing with the facts and calling people jealous because they are pointing out data you don't like!

You are incorrectly quoting 2022 and not 21 as I said. I would worry about your child at their school and not about other school where your daughter isn’t.

Show us the 2021 data....

Looking at the 2021 IB data, NLCS pupils scored an average of 43.15 - this is public data, I've just found it on their website.

This would put them just top of that Smapse list, above G&L. So top in 2021.

However, I suspect the reason they aren't there is that I think that list is a straight copy of the 2021 version of the "large schools" list from ib-schools, the second link above, which only lists schools with more than 20 pupils taking the IB -and NLCS only had 13 in 2021, so wouldn't appear in that table. They would have appeared in the "small" cohort table instead.

In 2022, NLCS had 33 pupils take IB, with an average of 40.73 (again from their own site). Which according to the IB-schools list, puts them 16th.

Agree there has been quite a bit of flouncing out from parents of NLCS who don’t like a different opinion or have facts pointed out.

Once the girls hit GCSEs, the 3 hours a night homework is very normal. This is our own personal experience and that of all her friends.

I once asked a 6th form parent if things improved in 6th form and she was very clear it didn’t. Her response was “if you want the results, you have to put in the hours. What did you expect when you joined the school?”

If there are really girls doing less than 1 hour per night, as some claim, I’m happy for them and their DDs. Perhaps the school is actually changing its culture.

My DD is one of the pupils who parents would have seen at open days. She was told explicitly beforehand that she was not to mention the amount of homework or downplay it if asked by any parents. Surely that should speak volumes.

As I mentioned in previous post, my daughter and her friends have not had a great experience. Their academic teaching may have been great but their levels of happiness has not this.

I agree its all a personal experience. My child is doing her GCSEs at NLCS, she’s not stressed, nor under pressure, its a very supportive environment. it’s a good fit for her academic ability, she’s doing very well. She has a wide circle of supportive and caring friends, she commutes by coach and doesn’t have anywhere near 3 hrs homework a night. She’s certainly not doing any school work past 7pm. I can only talk from our Personal experience of our daughter and her friendship group and siblings. I wouldn’t dream of commenting or cross my mind to talk about schools I didn’t have first hand experience or where my children didn’t go.