Isle of Wight is in the Top 5 of Authorities with NO Failing Secondary Schools
This has just come in from Wendy:
Check this out in today’s Guardian. The Isle of Wight is one of only 14 (it says 15 but I checked and it’s actually 14) local authorities that has NO low-performing secondary schools at GCSE (ie below the government’s baseline of 30% of pupils achieving 5+ A-C including English and Maths).
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schooltables/page/0,,2259734,00.htmlLooking at the authorities without any low-performing schools, you can see what their lowest-achieving school in 2007 is (access to tables is here):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/league_tables/default.stmLocal authority (% of 5+ A-C including E&M at their lowest achieving secondary school, 2007) Isle of Scilly (65%; only has one secondary school) Rutland (54%) Kensington & Chelsea (43%) Isle of Wight (39%) Luton (37%) Redbridge (37%) Hammersmith & Fulham (36%) Windsor & Maidenhead (35%) Wokingham (34%) Stockport (33%) Leicestershire (31%) Camden (31%) Cornwall (30%) City of London (no state secondary schools).
Which supports what I’ve always said: much as we should look to raise achievement on the Island, we should also realise how fortunate we are not to have any poorly-performing high schools. Credit where credit’s due. I wonder if the council will issue a press release about being in the top 14 LAs in the country in this regard?
For more information and a Standards-Not-Tiers Press Release, click to read more.
Standards-Not-Tiers researchers have discovered that the Isle of Wight is one of only 14 Authorities in the United Kingdom that last year was able to claim that all of it’s high (secondary) schools had more than 30% of pupils achieving A* to C at GCSEs, including maths and English. As the 5th best performing authority we are only just behind top performing Kensington & Chelsea.
With our worst performing high school getting 39% of pupils through their GCSE exams with at least a grade A* to C in 5 subjects including Maths and English, we are the fifth best authority in the country, convincingly beating Leicestershire and nearby Hampshire and Surrey.
The Guardian reports that “Birmingham has more than 20 failing schools, as do local authorities with large numbers of grammar schools. There are more than 30 low-performing schools in Kent, which also has the highest number of grammar schools. Some 79 of the 638 are in Ofsted’s “special measures” category and deemed failing”.
A Standards-Not-Tiers spokesperson said “This is great news. I am sure the Council will wish to join with us in congratulating our high schools on their excellent results. These results are particularly important as they distinguish Local Authorities where all schools perform well. It is often the case that a handful of high performance schools, invariably in better off enclaves and operating selective policies that deny other schools their natural intake, drive up the averages for the whole authority and mask the truth of the worst performing schools in that apparently high performing authority. The Isle of Wight is doing something right here and we should be considering our current reorganisation plans in this light. We want the Local Authority to concentrate on driving up standards without the massive disruption that the current plans will entail. In other, often high performance authorities, reorganisation has resulted in years of subsequent underperformance and that would be a tragedy here, particular given this excellent result”.
The government set a target of 30% in the autumn, which they say is important to raise standards among the least well off children and that failure is not excused because of their disadvantaged backgrounds. The list of authorities with no failing secondary schools is very encouraging for the Isle of Wight and should give our politicians food for thought as they head towards their decision on the 19th March. The list shows the worst performing school in the authority:
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All other Local Authorities fell below the Governments target.
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February 26th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Good work Wendy & Co - look forward to seeing this being given the front-page treatment in the County Press on Friday!
February 26th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Just to clarify: the figures relate to secondary schools in England, not (as it says in the SNT press release) the UK.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Interesting material, and it’s great that we have no ‘failing schools’. Reading the full texts of the links reveals that the methodology is widely criticised.
To add a local interpretation, on the Island we have five community high schools all achieving fairly similar percentages at ‘5 or more grades A*-C including English and Maths GCSEs’. From the DCSF website there were approximately 1590 pupils in those schools at the end of KS4. Approximately 680 reached that level, and approximately 910 did not.
Consider for a moment that one school became a grammar school (or church school etc.) of 300 pupils and only took those that would reach that level. For the same children, there would only be 380 reaching that level shared between the remaining four schools (with 1290 pupils). If evenly spread, each would only have a 29% pass rate at ‘5 or more grades A*-C including English and Maths GCSEs’. We would therefore have four ‘failing schools’.
No criticism of the media or SNT, but it does not seem to be a particularly useful measure on its own. The presence of grammar schools in some areas may not ‘pull up’ results; it may just cause a greater spread of results.
Average attainment would appear to be a better measure, as it is averaged over pupils, not schools, but even that is only part of the picture.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Introducing selection in the form of a church high school may well have a polarising effect, LDL (point 3), which is one reason it concerns me.
But something you should take into account: the IW was the 9th most improved authority for its GCSE 5+ A*-C inc E&M in 2007, so the average trend IS markedly upwards (of course we all want to see improvement, not just for every school to be above the government baseline).