What is school for -academic or social skills?

[southernsoftie]

We have the choice of 2 schools. School Ais a bit nearer, highly selective acadmically, and a good range of activities available but done very much outside the school day so require more effort on the part of the children and parents to participate. Children seem nice enough, but perhaps not much zest for life. Parents whose children go there are happy with it.

School B a bit further away (but there is a bus), much smaller, non selective, very friendly and children just what you would want - polite, articulate, friendly. Some of the brighter ones may leave at 13 to go to major public schools (this school only started to go to 16 quite recently). Parents very enthusiastic, including some who moved from school A because children weren't keeping up academically.

DS is very bright but issues with self esteem derived from poor social skills. So MN jury, would you go for school A which will play to his academic strengths but where he will not actively be made to develop social skills or school B where he may not have the academic competition from class mates (and presumably therefore won't be pushed as much) but where the focus in on the all-round child and they will encourage social skills?

School B - the idea of children not having much zest for life would put me off A completely. A bright child will do fine in a less academic school, so long as its not a disruptive environment. But a child who's social skills aren't great should be somewhere that they will help him to develop those.

Coming in late, but definitely school B. If the place is pleasant and the parents enthusiastic, this is far more likely to create an atmosphere where your ds feels he wants to go on learning more, even if that does mean finding his own learning to complement that of the school.

Thanks for comments so far. I lean to school B but dh wants A - two of his colleagues' dcs goes there and have been pleased with it. Certainly the recievd wisdom in our area is that school A is the only choice for bright children, but that just makes me want to make my own mind up rather than follow the herd. I suppose I need convincing that a school can make a difference to social skills and self esteem and that it is not just about getting as many A*s as possible.

Your school B sounds nicer to me.

We had a similarish choice of 2 schools for ds who is very accademic. Both were selective, but slightly against received wisdom we chose the less selective one that was quite a bit lower in the league tables. Like your school B it has more integrated extra curricular activities - lots of music, sport etc & we felt it was better for the whole child. I'm sure it was the right decision as ds is thriving (both academically and the rest of it). It does seem to me that the priority should be for a child to be happy & if that's the case then they are likely to do well.

Form what you've said the only concerns I'd have with school B are:

1. whether or not there will be at least a few other very able pupils in school B - doesn't need to be huge numbers, but at least a scattering, especially, from what you've said, after age 13 (assuming you don't plan to send him off to a major public school then too). If he sticks out too far academically he may struggle to fit in and risk being unhappy and underachieving. Being top isn't usually a problem, being top by a mile could be.

2. whether they are properly geared up to high level teaching up to 16 yet. Sometimes schools that don't have sixth forms don't attract the best qualified teachers and if it's only recently started taking children age 13+ then this might be a concern. It's not always the easiest thing to assess though.

Snorkle is right that you need to make sure that all of the higher-achieving children from school B don't go off to other schools at age 13.

I'm going to go against the grain and say that school A might be the right choice. In a bigger school there are more chances to fit in as there will be simply a larger number of social gourps so it's easier to find your niche. Plus they are known to be academic so there will be plenty of other academic children for your DS to interact with and compete with (friendly rivalry can make a massive difference in how hard children work, boys especially).

What do you mean by 'not much zest for life'? How can you tell? Are we talking a Demon Headmaster situation here? If the parents of children who already go there are happy then presumably they are not bad at social development.

Thanks Snorkle and TA - you both make really good points. Snorkle, I think that even the school won't know the answer yet. Last year was its first year of GCSE results so it really is still early days. I suspect parents who are there now will be delaying making the decision as late as possible (except for those who are fixed on a major public school as you say). My ds is Y5 now so it is a few years away for us too, but it would seem silly to send him to school B now if we end up needing to move him to school A at 13. I agree that there needs to be a few other able children, but that is quite a tricky question to word to the school!

On zest for life - when we went to the open day the children who showed us round were pleasant enough, just not much spark about them. The children at school B just fizzed with enthusiasm for it and the Head, the children at school A had to be asked lots of questions rather than volunteering information, although what they said was positive enough.

School A to me feels like a business (but a very good one) whereas school B feels like a community. Nothing wrong with being a business though and maybe school A is just being more honest about it.

No school will ever say outright that their teachers are underqualified and struggling to teach the syllabus. Equally they're not likely to say we have no high ability children here or that they all leave at 13.

So, you'll have to ask lots of very specific questions around the questions and listen carefully to both what their answers say and don't say.

Areas they are most likely to have low qualified teachers in are science, maths & ICT. So you could question if sciences at KS4 are always taught by subject specialists ie Chemists for Chemistry, Physics for Physics etc. and how are the teachers supported if not (Are they relying on the teachers to fend for themselves - providing extra training for them or best of all letting them work under the supervision of a properly qualified mentor (For this they'd need a graduate in each of the sciences on the staff). How many of their maths department have degrees in mathematics - that sort of thing. You could ask if results in any subjects were unexpectedly low or high.

On the ability spread questions around results of their highest achievers, where they go on to sixth form and to study what etc. I guess it's too early to ask what universities/courses they ultimately go on to, but you could ask where/what they might expect them to go on to. But with only one year group to go on it's not necessarily going to give you a representative picture.

It may be worth going back to both schools too. That your guide(s) at school 'A' lacked zest may have been an unlucky draw rather than a true reflection of the majority - or maybe school 'B' vets their guides more carefully rather than letting everyone have a go.

Oh, and you could also ask if they do any academic profiling of students (CAT tests or MidYis tests) and whether or not pupils achieve in line with what those predict for students at an independent school and whether that's true across the whole academic range or which ability groups perform best on those measures. Be careful to include the independent bit, as students in those schools do seem to outperform state students based on MidYis/CAT predictions.

Have had a quick look on the website and it says the three sciences are taught separately but that they do one science GCSE in Y10 with the option to do Additional Science in Y11 which is another GCSE. On ICT it says they all do an ECDL qualification. Not sure what all that means, sorry to say.

On the academic profiling, school B did get ds to sit the nefr papers on verbal and non verbal reasoning and I understand the children sit them every year as a way of monitoring progress. I presume that is different? They seem to have a decent record of scholarships etc at 13 but we would not really want to have to move ds then.

'sciences are taught seperately' is a good thing, but the question is 'by whom'. If biologists are teaching physics it's not as good as if physicists are teaching it.

The nfer papers should give them an indication of the raw abilities of their students - I'm not sure if they can make GCSE predictions based on them or not. So, for instance you could ask them what percentage of their students are in the top, upper middle, lower middle & bottom quartiles of ability and they may be able to tell you. Would also be interesting to know what percentage in the top decile as well and if that changes before/after 13 as you suspect it might.

The CAT/MidYis tests are something alot of schools use that as well as giving ability rankings also give GCSE performance predictions. So, you can see looking at a cohorts results (doesn't really work well looking at an individual level - too many statistical fluctuations) if the school is exceeding predicted performance for their ability intake or not and it is possible to break the results down further and see if hgher ability pupils are exceeding performance expectations by mor, less or the same as lower ability pupils.

In other words it gives a measure of value add and you can see if the school best serves high or low ability pupils.

Hope that helps.

ECDL is 'European Computer Driving License' by the way. It seems to be a well respected qualification that some schools are offering instead (or as well as) ICT GCSE. It basically shows competance at using computers, so employers like it.

Thank you so much, that is really helpful information to go back to the school with rather than just having to go on gut feeling all the time.

Should say on the teaching that I know of 2 of the teachers at KS2. One was headhunted from the Y6 class of my ds's school and is a reason for us thinking of moving now as he had a fantastic reputation. Also met the head of the senior school and he certainly said all the right things, there is just that lingering doubt that without any competition ds will not do as well academically as he might elsewhere if pushed by his contemporaries and the expectation of teachers. Hence my asking at the outset how important acadmemics are as part of the overall school experience.