23% of students get grade 5 or above in Maths & English

[outsidenowinside]

I am looking at secondary schools for DS and have become despondent about lack of quality.

Aside from 2 very over subscribed schools, schools in my area don't perform well. Even the better schools in my local area have a grade 5 or better gcse maths and English pass rate of around 65%

The remain schools have

23% of students getting grade 5 or better in Maths & English GCSE; another has 29%; another 35%; another 43% (even best schools in my area have a pass rate of 65%).

I have been to these schools' opening evening and the staff seemed attentive, the students seems bright, the school's' facilities were decent.

Am I expecting too much? I am worried DS will end up at the schools with the poorer pass rate and be dragged down by lower expectations.

How can schools within a 10 min walk of each other get such different results? None are selective.

So class where 8 out of 10 struggle to get a pass is more like a special needs school then?
Or a result of a very bad teaching/parenting.

80% children with spiky profile in OP's school? It's much higher then in general population.

8/10 aren't struggling to get a pass.
A pass is a 4.

Plus schools set for Maths GCSE, and are likely to set for English GCSE too.

But yes, bottom sets will struggle to pass, it is the way the GCSEs are designed with marking on a curve . Do you not understand that?

As well as the 'pass both with 5s' you need to look at the individual 'pass with 4s' rates. And look at progress 8 and how well previous high attainers do.

I mean it not that surprising if grade 5 represents average achievement. My retired headteacher dad is fond of pointing out that statistically half the population is of below average intelligence. It is statistically impossible for more than 50 per cent to achieve an average level of achievement.

Re bad teaching/ parenting.

Imagine a household where the parents themselves struggled at school, and have low paid jobs. Maybe contributing to that was some form of undiagnosed SpLD.

However keen they are on education it may be very hard for them to do much. They can't help their child themselves, can't afford a tutor, maybe struggle to provide tech for online access, maybe the child doesn't have their own room to study.

One thing we learned in covid, ability of families to support home learning is very varied.

id be trying to avoid tbh but you can also dig more into the stats as there can be important nuances hidden. The school I’m trying to avoid has got a higher percentage than that for 5s in English and maths but has a massive negative progress 8 for high achievers so it’s better at getting the kids to the pass mark but seemingly doesn’t do much with the ones who are capable of more.

Good grief. I had no idea it was this low. Blimey. All the schools round here are really good, and get 76%.

And that's with high and medium prior attainment components of 25% each, so truly impressive.

I wonder if you're in the same area as me as those numbers are pretty bang on from what I can remember reading. Or maybe that's just completely normal! We have 2 good schools that we are out of catchment for and would be costly to get to or our local which has a maths and English pass rate of around 25%. I was truly shocked ! I thought the local school was completely shocking in terms of facilities and teachers, although it's very small and dcs peers likely all going there. One of dcs friends grandmother went there about 50 yrs ago and said it literally hasn't changed. It's really shocking how underfunded schools are. I find all the data a bit hard to understand tbh. DC also very academic.

I didn't understand the progress 8 scores so will look into those.

I would be concerned for two reasons:

1. 23% is so far below the national average that unless the students entering the school have well below average prior attainment, there is a real issue with the quality of provision there. That could be with teaching, behaviour, culture (or probably a combination of both) but it doesn’t sound like an environment that’s going to help your DC achieve as best as possible.

2. Even if the school does have a well-below average ability intake, that will affect your DC. There are not likely to be many high ability students, so there won’t be much focus on pushing able students. Equally, there won’t be a culture of achievement and aiming high, which I imagine would also damage attainment.

Clearly, there will be examples of able students achieving well in these schools. However, I don’t believe the line that ‘smart students will do well anywhere’ as it is very difficult to overcome the quality of teaching, behaviour and culture of a school where you’re spending 5 days a week for 5 years.

Are they selective?
Do you live in a middle class / nice area?

I am still looking at school. Very frustrating.

I'm afraid that I have no knowledge whatsoever of where the schools are that apparently 'all' have a grade 5+ pass in both Maths and English, because the poster I quoted dodnt say. Nor, therefore, do I have any idea what the prior attainment profile might be of the schools they were describing. Which was sort of my pount, because that aspect wasn't mentioned.

Without clear reasons for it those numbers (especially the lower end) seem worrying. Our local high school is 34% but that is skewed by a)being in a grammar school area which creams off the really bright kids and b)having an autism base (I know not all autistic children have learning difficulties but the base does seem to cater for those with that profile).

At my DC’s school, it’s 32% with a progress 8 score of -0.38, which I consider pretty bad. They have an Ofsted RI grade, which they got in March 2020, with no sign of Ofsted since - so well over the 30 months that they’ve supposed to return within, even taking Covid into consideration - it does feel a bit like they’ve been left to rot. Other local schools have slightly better scores but they are all oversubscribed and this is our catchment school. They didn’t do school reports for the last academic year, so it’s hard to see how DC is doing academically, and emails to the school about anything generally seem to be ignored.

Goodness @Seiti that sounds awful. I’m kind of assuming they are also ineffectual, but have you contacted the Governors?

My area is exactly the same. It is purely intake-related in our case. DD school has just 33% getting the exam pass rate you mention, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the extremely competent and professional teachers, also by the methods they use and the lesson content. Particularly in the core subjects.

You could ask whether the kids are grouped or streamed according to behaviour and grades. DD in "top" set, where the general behaviour is way better than some of the other classes.

Basically, the foundations may well be there for your dc to learn and get decent grades, if they are motivated to do so.

I haven’t contacted the governors but not sure how effective that would be to be honest. There are a lot more things that are concerning that I won’t go into here, parents have been told continually since the Ofsted report that the school is getting back on its feet/aiming to improve, but it never does. I’m really not sure what the solution is other than to keep trying to move my DC.

I think that depends. Even if a school is decent (I.e teaching and behaviour isn’t terrible), I do still think having very few more able students is problematic if DC are in that group.

Naturally, the school will not have as much focus on stretching higher achievers simply because there are not many of them. Things like class discussion will not be as stimulating as other schools could offer.

I would also have concerns about the culture if there are very few/no other students aiming for top grades. Even if high achievement isn’t frowned upon (which I suspect it would be in many schools with such a low pass rate), it could be quite a lonely experience with no one else in the same boat to offer support/motivation.

Actually regardless of the intelligence of the population, the % that can pass their GCSEs in any given year is set at about 45/50%. It's not possible for everyone to pass that's the whole reason grade boundaries change yearly and why so many teachers criticise defunding functional skills exams etc.

If you can afford it, get a tutor. I work with kids over 5-6 months and we usually make good progress.

Those results are very worrying. In Northern Ireland schools are ranked differently but our local secondary has 100% achieving 5 GCSE passes. Maybe I took it for granted!

I've just looked at the worst secondary school in our area and it's 22%. Rest of the town looks like it's 40% +.

That poor school has been rebuilt and had endless changes of staff but it's in a grim area so the intake isn't going to be super academic.

My DC school is below the national average. I was surprised by this.

However my DC are flying and got/are predicted 7-9 across the board. So to an extent, I feel a bit "I am alright Jack".

Mine have both had/got nice friends who get together and work hard.