secondary school criteria -maths & English A-C or 5 passes

[confusedinlondon]

We have to start looking at secondary schools, we will be applying next year.
what is the best academic performance that I can use to judge a school; is it % who pass with 5 gcse or % who pass maths and English?

There are some schools with 30% of students passing both gcse maths and English whilst nearby there are other schools with 65% passing maths and English gcse.

I was also wondering if there was any 100% rule that I should follow such as
not bother to bother looking at with schools marked as ‘requires improvement or inadequate’ with low pass markets for students.
thanks

When looking at pass rates be sure to check whether they are for grade 4 or above or grade 5.

Pass rates will be impacted a lot by quality of incoming students. So you may be better off looking at 'progress8' results on the DofEducation website. You can then filter by prior attainment.
Ultimately if you have a bright child who has done well in sats then you want to know how well a school will teach him.

In our area one school has become known for helping kids with SEN, and has a disproportionate number of kids with ehcp and no doubt kids without but with eg dyslexia. This impacts percentage results, but not because of poor teaching.

The system is set up so 30% or so of pupils will fail maths / English language.

The dept of education has grade 9-5 for maths and English and grade 9-4 for the 5 gcse grades. Do you why why they are using these two different boundaries?

Because they invented a concept of a 5 being a 'strong pass'.
But actually no one cares much as a 4 is a pass and is what is mainly needed for progression.
It is all a bit muddled.

OP, absolutely look at these things, but the reality is you probably only have a chance of getting into 2-3 secondaries, given distance criteria etc, so probabilities play a part here too.

Sheila, That depends on the density of population. I live in catchment of 7 secondary schools that includes 3 faith schools and one grammar, 3 comprehensive

@confusedinlondon

I would look at OFSTED report and exclude inadequate and requires improvement. When it comes to Oustanding vs Good it matters a lot when the school was assessed. If it was Outstanding 10 years ago then it may radically change very soon as since 2020 they are far stricter evaluations. Read the report if it is relatively recent.

The higher percentage for 5+ In maths ans English and 7+ the better. Progress 8 and attainment 8 says something too.

But I would not rely purely on academic achievement. Go to open day, talk to parents. If it is sport focused school then it may not be the best choice if you have non sporty girl. Maybe in that case that music focused school would be better or school with extensive STEM specialism and so on.

The most important is bullying and exclusion rate, which is very hard to find out. All schools have instances of bullying but how the school handles it? Talk to the parents. Observe kids when they leave school.

I had a spreadsheet with all the data, read all the Ofsteds and whatever I could find on online forums, I also had a checklist of what I wanted for my child taking into account her strengths and weaknesses. Then I went and visited the schools.

The visit was the most useful thing - I also had a couple of questions that I asked every single school and got a huge range of answers.

Some schools that looked fantastic on paper I really disliked when I looked round, others were the opposite.

You need to be very honest about the realities of your child. If organisation and executive function are not their strong point, will they be happier in a more liberal school where detentions are not handed out like smarties, or happier somewhere with a rather draconian structure where everyone understands the rules.

Is your child likely to be in the cohort that are aiming for a string of 9s at GCSE and dreaming of Oxbridge? If so, make sure the school has a decent cohort achieving that. Or are they more average? Maybe look for a school where the focus isn't all on the highest achievers and those at the bottom.

Does the school have a specialism that is in line with your child's interests (or one that they would hate?) If so, are there aptitude tests, specialist provision etc. Watch on that one as well - if they specialise in Sports, do only the scholars get to be in the teams or is there room for the keen but challenged?

What's the SEN provision like - both if you do and don't have a SEN child. If fantastic for SEN, then great if your child needs that help, but also give them a bit of slack if the grades aren't as shiny as the 'hopeless for SEN' school down the road.

I looked at over a dozen schools as we were targeting aptitude tests so not restricted to local area, and my ranking on the spreadsheet changed drastically after visits. One school, that I'd applied for the scholarship as I liked it so much on paper, we ran away from the open day it was so awful... but it's hugely competitive for places and other parents love it.

It depends whether schools are oversubscribed in your area and what the admission criteria are.

The very best thing to do is to go and visit all the schools you might be interested in on their open evenings and during a school day if you’re able. Seeing a school on an ordinary day tells you a lot.

Whilst I’d be wary of a school that’s inadequate, please don’t dismiss a school that requires improvement. It might be that category for something that wouldn’t worry you. By the same token, schools that are outstanding might not suit your child, might not have had an inspection for years and might be a harsh regime. You don’t know until you go and look and get a feel for the ethos.

Please don’t rely on statistics. Consider extra curricular activities, pastoral care and travelling. Remember, you aren’t choosing a school, you’re expressing a preference.

True, but Op is “confused in London” so assume she is in the capital, but it may be a cunning bluff 😀

Because of the number of people living "on top of each other" here in London, we have quite a few schools to chose from

.

I would also look at both progress 8 report and read between the lines in Ofsted reports. Do you know any parents with children in these schools? Chances are, if you are in a local primary school, some of your child's friends will have older siblings in the secondary.

Looking at the school DC attends, It reports GCSE for Maths and English and five other subjects, in both grade 4, 5 and 7 or above.

The government website that shows school performance is https://www.find-school-performance-data.service.gov.uk/. The government website looks to only have english and maths grade 4 or above.

Remember the results are dependent on the intake.

A school with an average intake getting Bs may be better than a school with a very strong intake getting As.

Progress 8 is a good one to look at as this judges based on starting points.

I'd say that viewing the school and asking your own questions if more important than any statistic though. The stats are mostly good for weeding out outliers or schools that don't have performance in line with intake.

we are in greater london.

We have a choice of about 4-6 schools, I think. None of these schools are great; their GSCE passmarks are below the borough and national average which is why they have spare places evert year. We have 2 decent schools that have a tiny catchment.

Which area of London is that?

You can drill down into their cohort and look at prior attainment. Are they taking in a large number of low ability students? How well does each ability level do?

For my son's school we looked at all this plus Progress 8. Mainly because he had 2 choices of school, one that tells you Progress 8 is well above average and is outstanding and one is good that boasts 72% get 5 GCSEs grades 4-9 including English and Maths. But we knew from speaking to that head that the focus for them is pulling up anyone on a 3 to get a 4, anyone on a 6 is sort of left to it. So that 72% could be that most of them get 5s and so moving onto A level would be more difficult for them due to the grade projection off that. It isn't about a large data 4-9 grades but a breakdown of how many got 9s and 8s?

This is all child dependent too. If your child is classed as a middle or high ability then understanding that you may have to steer and help them at home to improve their chances of higher grades at GCSE. This board is incredibly helpful in doing that. For us, Pastoral care, response times for the school getting back to us and discipline were important too.

Totally ignor the Ofsted report, I would read it if the school says inadequate to see why it says that. As someone who works in education Ofsted really don't get long enough in each school to give you a really good picture.

Going and seeing a school when the kids are in, not open evening is probably the best you will get. Or asking anyone you know who already has kids there.

Finial results probably don't give the full picture either as another poster said the progress 8 score is more useful.

Another issue is a lot of schools have fluctuating a lot over the past few years, due to teacher assessed grades, so look at 2019 grades and compare them to this year. Not all the in-between ones will have been published anyway.

It's really what is in your catchment and the best fit for your child. Don't ever make the mistake of only putting down your favourite option on the form, use all the options with at lest one you know you could get into easily. Or the LEA will assign you just any school.

That is a lot of choice. Although, fir most people, it’s just the comps they would be choosing between

I think they want to "up" the benchmark grade to 5. However it would have been unfair to say that the previous cohort needed a C and the newer cohorts need a 5 (which is equivalent to high C/B). So they kept the concept of 4 being a "pass" grade, but are judging schools on both 4+ and 5+. Post 16 courses are separating out into whether they require a 4 or a 5, and presumably some jobs may change their requirement from C/4 to C/5.

>Totally ignor the Ofsted report, I would read it if the school says inadequate to see why it says that

There is a lot of interesting facts in Ofsted reports about the nature of the school apart from the grading. I would read everything possible related to particular school.

That was a choice for us minus only boys grammar but if somebody has a daughter has one more choice. And there are quite a few private schools