TakenThePlunge

From personal experience - I know anecdotal evidence is supposed to be bad, but it works for me.


My belief is that leagues tell you very little about good schools, my daughter's previous school had an excellent league position, fairly decent Ofsted reports, but it was a dreadful school. The school she's in now has a much worse league standing, but it is actually better run.

I'm not saying that having leagues automatically makes all teaching bad, just that it distracts the schools focus. You can see it over and over again (not just in schools).

daddyofthree

As a parent without any experience of working in schools don't be fooled by politicians telling you that league tables and transparent accountability is a good thing. Sorry but from personal experience it's total crap and one of the big reasons why I'm applying for Aus. Why? They are simply stats and stats are often fiddled big time. Also:
I have worked in what are considered 2 very good schools and 2 challenging schools. In both cases the teachers in the challenging schools were generally far better teachers who do far more for the kids (in my experience remember!!). When I taught in the 'Good' schools very little teaching, revision classes or idividual attention was conducted simply because we knew the kids were bright enough to pass!
My mates daughter is in private ed and achieved 13 GCSE's (all A's and one B) last year but received very little help. A student at my current school (with half the intelligence) will come out with 17 GCSE's because of vocational qual's but is attending classes every night.
Another school I know closed down because there was a mass exodus as a result of league tables. The schools they went to (one was mine) were considered to be good schools yet many did not achieve anywhere near their expected grades.
Sorry to have gone on a bit but I could honestly write a book on the subject. I'll finish by agreeing that VA grades are far better predications as to how well a school is performing!
BoL

hoveactually

I don't believe that there are such things as good schools or bad schools, rather there are schools with good or bad teachers and good or bad management.
An example is the Harris Academy Merton. This was established to replace Tamworth Manor Secondary School which was deemed to be a failing school with 32% of pupils achieving 5 A-C GCSEs. Under the new regime, within 2 years, their results have improved to 74% achieving 5 A-C grade GCSEs and not surprisingly is now oversubscribed. The children at the school come from the same socio-economic background as before and I don't imagine that the existence of school league tables did anything to distract the school's focus.

NKSK version 2

As far as I'm concerned tables/school data do two things:
1. They tell you whether your child will be sitting with kids from motivated families or not.
2. They force headteachers to think twice about a whole range of issues from curriculum to staffing to general management and leadership.

Currently, it is just about impossible to get the information for the first point and headteachers can get away with cruising along, doing bugger all.

daddyofthree

I totally agree with you hoveactually and you have just proved a valid point.
NKSKyou know the system in Perth a great deal better than me and I'm sure your right as with your secondd point. However, I would somewhat disagree with your first point as some talented kids are in care and don't get the support they need or deserve. There are many financially deprived kids who have far better and supportive parents than often better off kids - just my opinion! I think its scary when we generalise but I also believe that schools are accountable. Perhaps if inspectors did a complete inspection of all teachers and graded schools in terms of teacher / department effectiveness as well as what the school offered to its students, including general behaviour and extra curricular, it would give parents a clearer understanding!

carolinephillips

OFSTED reports are not worth the paper they are written on, especially now they have been softened and the inspectors don't look at individual lessons. A school is forced to have plans of action to tick the right boxes on their government dictated agenda regardless of whether they usefully apply to that school. What you get are stressed out staff and heads filling in mounds of paperwork, the teaching becomes totally artificial, and in several cases that I know (as teacher and parent) disruptive children have been kept away from school during inspection days. One school I know got a bad mark because they did not have a sufficiently multicultural/ language diverse display- it was a school that consisted entirely of white middle class children who had no need to have books in Urdu!!! (It did have multicultural lessons linked to celebrations and festivals, but that wasn't enough apparently.)
The govt. have no concept that one rigid scheme doesn't suit everyone.
Enough of my soapbox, but one of the reasons I left teaching was that you couldn't teach to suit the circumstances- no diversion from the lesson that ticked today's set box, and that as a teacher you spent more time filling in paperwork than actualy enabling your pupils to develop and understand.:curse:

daddyofthree

Totally agree with you Carolyne and it's a shame that people like you with the right attitude leave the profession