Gcses. The gap between independent schools /grammar and vs comprehensive and across England. Should progress 8 try to push more students into targets of 7-9 gcses? Are local secondary schools doing enough to stretch higher ability pupils?

[Greaded]

Ok so my dd is only going into y10 but i feel local schools could have done a lot better at trying to ‘push’ the higher ability kids. Even from reception right through to current year groups.
Im not sure what FFT would have predicted from SATs (all exceeding) as our schhool seems to combine them with performance but i dont feel the teaching is teaching them for those higher grades. Which imo would have needed

• feedback /marking homework
• end of year exams
• more appropriate homework set
• more setting in some subjects
• spelling tests (now scrapped at the primary ) and spelling tests and grammar for the mfl

im sure these are thibgs the geammar schools will all be doing.

not all students will achieve just because they did before but the gov data doesnt even publish the data for school other than grade 4+ or 5+ maths and eng.

Our comp pushed all kids, whether top, middle or lower sets. They did everything in your bullet list.

Thats good Teen. And i think if we can see those are probably sensible/useful or minimum expected, then who do some schools not bother.
(the primary also only had teacher read with the kids about 6 times a year if that.)

My 16yr old just got mainly 9s, some 8’s and a 7 for their GCSEs in a “good” state secondary. He loves his school and is mixing with a wide range of kids from different backgrounds and cultures. So he’s happy, confident and great at relating to most people, whoever they are.

It seems there’s a big gap between comprehensive schools in different areas of the country. London tends to do better than other areas. The country needs to understand why that is and see if the same can be created in other areas.

We are in (suburban) London and our son is doing very well at the local comprehensive.

I think you are right. We are rural and the only comp near us (our catchment school) teaches all mixed ability groups (including for maths) up to end of Y9. There’s no way that the ability extremes can be effectively catered for in this scenario. My bright DD was thoroughly bored at primary school and it looked like several more years of the same scenario at secondary school. We are not an high income family and could in no way afford for her to go private. Luckily, DD is very bright and achieved a place at a grammar school about half an hour away. I feel sorry for kids who have no option but our local state school. All the emphasis is on SEN and kids who are 3 - 4 GCSE borderline.

Why should only the higher ability kids be pushed?

But kids like your DD will always do well academically.
Children who are below 3 or SEN will need a bit more heplp to achieve the pass mark which is a 4. Why would you deny these children something so basic?
School budgets are stretched, there are not enough very good teachers to go around.

Our comprehensive pushes all the kids. They’ve just had 49% 9-7 and 82% 5-9. My child got 3x9 4x9 and 2x7 and didn’t even make the list of high performers.

FFT5 is the score expected if your child was attending one of the top 5% performing schools in the country. And the targets generated from that at the beginning of Y10 are different to the ones regenerating them (from CAT4 scores this year, as there was no KS2 data - it's more accurate and inclusive in any case, as not all children take SATs) about a month and a half ago, as the DfE changed their methods of calculating progress due to the previous version being based upon pre-Covid cohort data and qualifications.

Where a kid has taken SATs, that is the base for the DfE expected progress. So somebody who scored an average of 111+ between reading and maths would have negative Progress 8 if they did not average x grade in their 8 best subjects. It is therefore not in a school's interest to 'not push' both higher and lower baseline students - especially as any number of things can happen, such as illness, disability, home circumstances, that means some are unable to reach their expected average due to non attendance, reduced timetables, not taking the minimum number of exams.

All children should have the opportunity to use their potential, yes.

My DP DS got 3 xA, 7xA and 1xB plus a u in further maths on Thursday. His best mate got 11xA and a distinction in further maths - both boys are in the local comp

I’m not sure why you’re coming at me for sharing my personal experiences. I note that you haven’t shared yours / your DCs own experiences. I’ll start by saying that I’m not denying anybody anything. I’m simply stating that children like my DD are not being well served by our local rural catchment comprehensive where setting for the first three years is non-existent. She would have learnt very little. Just as others, quite rightly, advocate for the needs of their SEN or lower ability children to thrive and learn at their own level, I feel that children like my daughter should also be adequately catered for. In my personal experience this is not what happens in our catchment comprehensive. Do you actually believe that higher ability children simply have to ‘suck it up’ as they will ‘do well anywhere’ (highly debatable) and that all resources and ‘good teaching’ should be directed at lower ability / SEN?

Parental involvement from Day 1 is key here.

• feedback /marking homework

In my experience, in many different state schools now, it's a couple of pieces of assessment and the rest is tick and flick. Pupils mark their own work and occasionally peer assess but teachers aren't doing much beyond "live marking" (getting round books in the lesson) at least in secondary.

Lots of talk of plugging gaps by checking data, entry quizzes, exit tickets and shiny whiteboards but many are still being left behind.

• end of year exams

Still seeing this happening, just not often outside of the classroom until KS4.

• more appropriate homework set

Continues to be a bone of contention, in terms of marking, accessibility and value/meaning. Much is online now.

• more setting in some subjects

Mixed ability has taken over. Teaching to the top. Levelling up. Mantra that if you are scaffolding/doing well for SEND then it is working for everyone.

• spelling tests (now scrapped at the primary ) and spelling tests and grammar mfl

Surprised scrapped at primary. In my experience, even though a lot was online homework, spelling was still a big deal because of hothousing for the SpaG paper in year 6 SATS.

Many linguists I know still test spelling and grammar and Wikibuild is the latest thing for literacy.

I do agree with you though that with less provision for what used to be termed gifted and talented cohorts, now prior high attainers, you are relying on them pushing themselves, taking up any opportunity open and hoping they have the sense to be proactive.

Until recently I taught at a comprehensive that regularly appears near the top of league tables. The focus internally is almost entirely on pupil premium students/those needing a lot of help to get "standard passes" (4s) in English and Maths as that's what the government and Ofsted mainly seem to care about. There is very much a view that high achievers with home support will get on with it without stretching, apart from a bit of Oxbridge/medic prep.

For my part, as an approach, I think it does make sense with limited resources.

State schools are massively underfunded. They just can’t do it all imo

@Greaded your original post is not well written, making it difficult to respond to. What data are you using as the basis of your argument? The Government can't publish Progress 8 data for 2025 or 2026 because there is no baseline SATs data (due to Covid).

In principle, I agree that many comprehensive schools find it difficult to meet the needs of their full range of students. It's very difficult to differentiate teaching in mixed ability groups. I'm a governor at a comprehensive school and I do see decisions being made that benefit lower attaining students to the detriment of higher attaining students. But I also see that there are no easy answers.

Why can't the everywhere have state schools that replicate the SW in terms of achievement?

There is no point targeting the grade 7s until youve got the rest of the country passing!

And yes, im a parent with a child that would have benefited from the top being stretched, but id really, really really like the bottom not to become so disillusioned with life they think stealing cars and driving them the wrong way down a duel carriageway is the way to treat others.

The gap in results is for obvious reasons.
It doesn’t mean ‘bright’ pupils are pushed more in independent and grammar schools.
They are selective and therefore have more ‘bright’ pupils than a comprehensive that takes all comers.
Individual ‘bright’ pupild in comprehensive well get good c results -you are comparing the whole cohort which is illogical.

I have relatives in state schools who certainly should have been stretched but came out with 7s/6s, decent results but these were 8/9 level kids. Family couldnt afford independent but completely regret not trying to find the funds.

In our independent, it was a bit better but again the focus is to bring children who are at a 4 to a 6. Still no stretch for those who can get better than a 7.

We are currently looking at other independent schools purely to stretch, results for gcses are around 85% 8/9s.

The most able pupils have more able peers, though, and there is often a high performing team effect.

I never had to worry about 'covering the syllabus' in a grammar. We had time to do extra stuff.

Large proportions of EAL students or students from cultures or families where education is valued and seen as the route to getting a good job/better earnings. It’s basically a parenting thing not a school thing.

Even on MN where parents are more ‘aware’ than your typical parent if you’d posted asking for suggestions of work books for daily work and holiday work you would almost certainly be told that children need time to be children or something similar.

In addition, for slightly more complicated reasons both HA children and EAL children tend to have higher P8 scores than MA or LA children. This might make some schools appear on paper to be better than others if you look at overall P8 rather than P8 for individual demographics.

The local private schools finish at 4 and often do an hour of compulsory after school activities or in school homework / coursework on top. Plus half day Saturday. The local comp finishes at 3, and earlier on Friday. The private school is doing at least 8 hours extra teaching per week excluding extra curricular. And the classes are nearly half the size. Even allowing for different intakes and Sen etc the private school kids are getting 1.5 extra days of teaching time a week and that will obviously show in results and allow more time per subject and more subjects.

My experience is out of date now but my older son’s academy school was really disappointing in this way. I looked at their progress 8 scores at the time and they were positive for the lowest SATS tier and then progressively declined until they became outright negative for the higher SATS tiers.

My kid was ok because he comes from a family where everyone (including all four of his grandparents) had degrees, several close family members had gone to Oxbridge, several had higher degrees, books everywhere etc etc. But I was really struck by some of his peers, who were evidently smart but did not have the same family background. They should have been shooting for 7+ grades but were told by the school that hitting a 5 or a 6 was ace, fab, terrific. And for some kids it is! But for some, they can absolutely aim higher with all that means for uni choices and employment prospects. Not to mention being fucking bored beyond belief.

It was a good school in some ways (I was really impressed with the social cohesion and absence of bullying) but bloody hell, the poverty of its ambitions for the students used to make me mad. It’s not the middle class kids from naice families who lose out — it’s the kids from more hard scrabble backgrounds whose potential is never recognised, let alone achieved.

I'm a bit confused by the idea that kids who should have been getting 7-9 being told that a 5 is 'terrific' when if they had performed well in their SATs, their target would have been a 7-9 and a 5 would have been flagged as underperformance.