Watford Girls tops GCSE rankings for state non-selectives

[ToadMum]

Students at our school who come in via other routes can struggle to keep up with the pace of the work and in some instances have ended up leaving. Increasingly parents with siblings are making sure they are equipped to compete with the academically selected students. I can't see the point of going to an academically selective school and being in all the bottom sets. You would be better off going to a local comp and being in all the top sets. DG

Sorry, DG, but this bit of your post niggles just a bit...

At the end of the day, DAO (wonderful as I am sure it is) is meant to be a comprehensive school, and that statement rather gives the impression that they would rather not have even the very, very low percentage of kids who didn't make Level 4 at KS2 - or possibly even the low percentage of kids (36 children in the 2013 GCSE cohort) whose achievement was at Level 4. Does the school assume that these 40 only didn't achieve better than Level 4 because they weren't willing to work hard enough and therefore make no allowances for different needs and abilities? Especially in an area without fully selective schools to compete with, it really doesn't look like a very "comprehensive" intake, for whatever reason.

[Daogroupie]

As you are in Essex it is understandable that you might think that there are no fully selective schools near by but in fact QE boys is less than ten mins away and HBS probably twenty minutes. We know lots of students who have brothers at QE and sisters at HBS, we know one student who has a brother at Latymer and one at QE. So there is choice. And many parents certainly carefully choose which school is best for each dc if they have the opportunity. In terms of students at the school I was actually talking about the parents who rent a house in Dugdale Hill and take a place on distance away from the local students and then move right back to where they came from as soon as they can. There were 3 families in my dd's class alone that did that and I know over 10 more. They give their dcs the message that money talks and they do not have to bother to work hard and sit the exam because their parents can cheat a way in for them. I would like to see all the distance places go to the local children who actually live there and so would the school and many of the parents. The school have done their best by refusing to allocate places to students who have parents who are clearly taking distance places away from local children but the families just go to appeal and win their way back in by claiming that now they have no other school to go to. It is those students who would probably be in the top sets at their local schools and have more opportunities to be in the school orchestras and bands and sports teams. Just physically being at the school is not what it is about, it is participating and contributing that makes it worthwhile. Do the Watford schools have families who move in to get a place and then move back out again? Obviously QE and HBS don't because you can live anywhere to apply and there are no distance places. Latymer you have to live locally but everyone has to sit the exam, there are no local distance places. In this aspect DAO and the Watford consortium potentially have the same issues. It is not to do with Level 4's and below, all of the families I know who moved to get a distance place would have dc's who easily got Level 5's. They just saw it as easier than preparing to get an exam place. Without these families DAO would have a more comprehensive intake than it does but the council has not supported DAO in its effort to defeat the distance cheats so they are able to take the local places away from the local families. DG

[Fitzylady]

Ahh if only they had kept the school in Islington, as a city school - then we wouldn't have had to resort to the exam!!!!
I don't think renting nearby is any different to employing a tutor - all costs money that the poorer kids won't have access too - thus keeps it generally middle class.

[Daogroupie]

It is a different admission criteria so you are impacting a different set of applicants. If you hire a tutor you are competing with the wealthy middle class in the prep schools who have hired the school to do the work for them and are planning for that investment to get them their secondary school free of charge. If you rent a house in Dugdale Hill and apply for a distance place you are taking a place away from one of the local children who live in Potters Bar who want to go to their local school which is in the same street. So do you really think that renting a house in Dugdale Hill and taking a space from a local child is the same as hiring a tutor and working hard to get in from a state school instead of spending money on a prep school? As to staying in Islington they did not have that choice. The Labour council told all selective schools they had to go private or move out which is why St Clement Danes went to Chorleywood and Dame Alice Owen's came to Potters Bar. So they moved to stay in the state sector so you still can apply without paying any money. If they had stayed in Islington they would have had to become a cheque book only school. DG

[SHertsDad]

Tense, DAO helps people to not select the school in case they have too low chances. Not sure if Parmiters disclose the student exam ranking?

[mum1969]

Comparing numbers applying to DAO and Parmiters and number of places available really doesn't work as a comparison between the 2 schools. DAO give you your ranking and publish on their website the last rank to be offered a place each year. As a result many who sit the exam do not bother to apply, in fact the Headmaster tells parents that if you are ranked below a certain level not to waste an option on the school. In 2013 this resulted in the number of applications to the school dropping by about 400. A truer comparison would be numbers sitting versus number of places on selection but this is impossible to know with Parmiters as it is covered by the SW Consortium exam.

Having prepared my DC's for both exams - the VR is exactly the same. Maths papers present different problems - SW Consortium is straightforward but easy to make simple errors. Maths scores are also standardised which can mean one mistake can prove very costly. DAO maths can be more tricky but encourages the child to think and thus less prone to simple errors. Having the English element at DAO does mean a child who is reasonable in maths can score highly overall if they are good at English whereas with the Consortium exam you solely rely on the maths paper.

I would disagree with DG that there are many alternative schools to DAO - QE, HBS and Latymer are all fully selective, not such a draw if there are siblings involved. They are also spread over quite a wide area, QE being the only one close to DAO but boys only. HBS isn't an easy journey necessarily especially from the DAO Herts area. Latymer and DAO catchment areas are widely different.

Overall, comparing DAO and Parmiters in this way i.e. application process, is a waste of time. They serve different areas and have different admissions processes.

[tense]

Absolutely. As I said 'up thread' these are all great schools and why split hairs about the odd point difference here & there? Parmiter's & DAO appear to have incredibly similar set-ups, ethos etc. And clearly, had I lived further east in Herts my focus would be on DAO, not the WC schools! These schools may be relatively geographically close, but independent travel between them would not be straightforward - similar to the DAO / HBS travel scenario Mum1969 outlines.

[tense]

Sorry, SHerts dad. Forgot to say that the WC does release test scores before the CAF has to be in. Parmiter's (no idea about the others) publishes the lowest qualifying scores in recent years on its website. That is certainly a useful guide for parents IMO, if not quite as precise as a rank.

I actually had no idea DAO gave a ranking. TBH I'm a little surprised. DG often mentions how when you arrive at the school it's how you perform then that matters, not how you got in (exactly as it should be!). Surely some 'braying' parents can't resist bragging about their little darling's rank?

[mum1969]

There is just as much opportunity to brag knowing a score as there is with a rank (you actually get rank and score). I think most parents know well enough that it would be foolish to brag about one exam result that has no weight once in a school. I can confirm that teachers at DAO have no knowledge of a student's entry into the school and they are purely assessed on their work once there. This is particularly evident at parent/teacher evenings.

[WP]

Sorry, SHerts dad. Forgot to say that the WC does release test scores before the CAF has to be in. Parmiter's (no idea about the others) publishes the lowest qualifying scores in recent years on its website. That is certainly a useful guide for parents IMO, if not quite as precise as a rank.

They can't really give a rank, because unlike in the DAO case these tests are taken by people considering applying to any of seven schools. All those schools now publish the lowest successful scores from the last few years, which is about the best they can do.