Concerned about potential new school’s GCSE results

[cst1983]

It looks like we are going to have to move during the next year due to DH’s job. For the area that we are looking at the catchment school results don’t look great to me but both DC do well at school and DH is of the opinion that bright children will do well anywhere, the results aren’t actually that bad, and I’m worrying about nothing.

The school’s 2024 GCSE results;

Progress 8 score: 0.73
Grade 5 or above in English & Maths: 25.2%
Grade 4 or above in English & Maths: 45.5%

Am I worrying unnecessarily?

For many schools the high prior attainment pupils will have the lowest P8 scores simply because it is much harder to over-achieve when your target grades are already so high.

That being said, this school would be a hard no for me. The P8 and results for high prior attainment pupils are indicative of serious weaknesses andI would not risk that for my children - regardless of how ‘bright’ they are.

The difference between a 5/6 and a 7 is the difference between being allowed to study a subject at A level and being prohibited. A p8 of -1.3 roughly equates to a lower than expected grade by 1.3 in EVERY subject taken at GCSE. That’s not trivial.

So, my kids' school, which I rate very highly (and is Outstanding), has a Progress 8 of - 0.28 for the high achievers with 73% on 5+ Eng/ Maths. It's the only P8 in minus for the school so perhaps it's more difficult to get a high achiever P8 (there are only 30 children in that 'set' or if 174 in the year, which is statistically quite unreliable).

Also, "most of the measures published here, in December 2024, relate to students who completed key stage 4 in the summer of 2024" ie. A one-off year - might have been a bad year or a good year. They should do a rolling statistic averaging the last 5 years, if people are going to put so much weight on it. It's quite unreliable when you think about it!

DDs normal state school has an average P8 of 0.64, with high achievers having a P8 of 0.73. So its not always true the high attainers don't get above average P8 scores.

Thats the trouble with Statistics though... you can manipulate them to prove your point.

Also P8 scores won't be produced for the next couple of years as the currentvYr20s and Yr11s didn't do Yr6 SATs

Thanks all, we definitely need to think carefully about our next steps.

One point about progress scores. I get that they may be worse at the moment due to Covid effects but if all schools are given a rating of average or above/below based on the score, isn’t that relative to all results in that year and so Covid wouldn’t in theory affect it? - although recognising that some schools may have been impacted more than others. Looking at the ranking of the school that we are looking at compared to others in the same county, it has the second worse rating for progress score for a mainstream secondary out of over 150 schools.

I have also found the school’s previous year’s overall progress scores: -0.45 (2019), -0.58 (2022), -0.38 (2023) - so not as bad as last year but still not great and so it doesn’t look like it was a one off bad result, just worse than usual.

We will obviously speak to the school if we decide to proceed, I’m just trying to decide what we can do, first.

The bit that is tricky is consistency over time and your secondary seems to be poor over a number of years.

Our catchment secondary has had terrible results for a few years. The year before last it had a very similar negative progress 8 for high achievers as the OP’s and I have been desperate to avoid it. New head started a few years ago but this year’s results have shown a massive leap in progress so I’m a lot more reassured- something has clearly changed by the sheer jump in results. I still don’t love it but progress 8 is now positive and English/maths at 5 plus is now 55%. I would be very worried by the stats at your school unless there is a serious improvement plan in place.