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.

@noblegiraffe i totally get where you’re coming from, and all I can say is that I was confused (and maddened) too. It’s a long time ago but I think I remember DS’s target grades gradually degrading over time, like ‘oh you just had a lucky day with your SATS’ (narrator’s voice: he had not had a lucky day with his SATS). It really was an unbelievably crap school for academic progress — at that stage it was one of the worst schools in the county <proud face>. So I’m not saying it’s typical! But some schools really are that bad.

They have longer holidays, so the teaching hours even out over the year,
Grammar and indies do however attract and retain the best teachers which is what parents choose to pay for.

I’ve no doubt some are but I doubt that was typical.

I’ve just remembered the period of time when schools used all the 1:1 catch up funding for tutoring kids ok the 4/5 or 5/6 boundary at KS2 because it’s much easier than getting the kids on the 3/4 boundary it was intended for to improve and has the same affect on the schools KS2 progress scores.

My children are ‘bright’ pupils, who attended both state and private, and I can tell you that there is a substantial difference.

At state the stretching was a few ‘extension’ questions if they were done with their work. Independent, there are so many things: a morning club for pupils identified as gifted where they do science projects, different papers when working in class and at home, maths competitions with other schools - many competitions actually (spelling bee, creative writing, etc) either just for the school or with other school etc.
I also noticed that clubs at state were mostly about sports or art whereas at private school they also have many options like chess / physics / biology.

But kids like your DD will always do well academically.

Bold assumption. It's actually quite common for gifted children to underachieve dramatically when they're systematically deprived of adequate challenges and stimulation.

"Grammar and indies do however attract and retain the best teachers"

No. They attract teachers who want to focus on teaching students capable of getting the top grades. They are often high achievers themselves, e.g. grammars/Indies appear more likely to have teachers who are Oxbridge graduates or PhD graduates. Sometimes (in my own DC's experience of a super-selective grammar sixth form) they have a lot of knowledge but are poor teachers.

Comprehensive school teachers need to be able to differentiate their teaching for a broad skill set, and need to retain the interest and focus of students from different backgrounds and different levels of motivation. They therefore have a more difficult job. Many do it brilliantly.

I've taught in all three types of school and all of them had excellent teachers, jaded teachers, less good teachers, keen but inexperienced teachers - I'd say motivation often depends more on the nature of the leadership team and the context than the type of school.

It is certainly true that grammar schools with their highly selective intakes have an easier time with recruitment than schools with the most difficult intakes who often have to take anyone with a pulse because teachers don’t want to work there for obvious reasons.

The original Comprehensive vision was intended to "preserve all that is valuable in grammar school education for those children who now receive it [whatever that means] and make it available to more children" ... https://education-uk.org/documents/des/circular10-65.html