Parent Power - The Sunday Times - The Tale of Two Halves
Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2019 12:45 pm
I'm not talking about the league tables which change year to year. The leading article of yesterday's Parent Power illustrates the headaches many parents feel when choosing secondary schools - and the problems seem to be unchanged for many years already.
I quote the first half of the article which is available to subscribers at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/seco ... -ltn7zsvmb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Education in this country is a tale of two halves. No, not the familiar one of state-funded versus private education, though that comes into it, but rather the contrasting outcomes at primary and secondary levels.
As Parent Power reported last week, inner-city schools in the poorer parts of London and elsewhere are starring. Yet today’s tables for secondary schools show that there is not a single high-flying secondary school in any of those areas, and very few even in our online table of 500 state secondary schools.
Some of the children from the outstanding primary schools will have joined the throng criss-crossing our cities every day on their way to the best schools. Others, if they can hang in there, will have the opportunity of going to a first-class sixth-form college, such as the London Academy of Excellence, in Newham. But many miss out.
Sir Michael Wilshaw highlighted this issue when he was the schools’ watchdog. In 2016, he spoke powerfully about the depressing trend of the brightest children from disadvantaged backgrounds who fail to make the progress in secondary school that could have been expected from their earlier achievements.
Parent Power’s tables for secondary schools bring out just how uneven the provision is. There is huge regional disparity. Of the top 150 state secondary schools, 38 are in the southeast, but only one is in the northeast. There is also asymmetry in the school types. Only 20 of the top 150 are comprehensives, with the rest either grammar schools (121) or partly selective (9).
All the comprehensives, however, are selective in some way. Twelve are faith-based. Six are Jewish — astonishingly, almost half of all Jewish secondary schools. Five are Christian and one is Muslim. Two are boarding schools where education is state-funded, but there is a charge for boarding. The rest are in prosperous areas so, in effect, it is selection by house prices".
I quote the first half of the article which is available to subscribers at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/seco ... -ltn7zsvmb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Education in this country is a tale of two halves. No, not the familiar one of state-funded versus private education, though that comes into it, but rather the contrasting outcomes at primary and secondary levels.
As Parent Power reported last week, inner-city schools in the poorer parts of London and elsewhere are starring. Yet today’s tables for secondary schools show that there is not a single high-flying secondary school in any of those areas, and very few even in our online table of 500 state secondary schools.
Some of the children from the outstanding primary schools will have joined the throng criss-crossing our cities every day on their way to the best schools. Others, if they can hang in there, will have the opportunity of going to a first-class sixth-form college, such as the London Academy of Excellence, in Newham. But many miss out.
Sir Michael Wilshaw highlighted this issue when he was the schools’ watchdog. In 2016, he spoke powerfully about the depressing trend of the brightest children from disadvantaged backgrounds who fail to make the progress in secondary school that could have been expected from their earlier achievements.
Parent Power’s tables for secondary schools bring out just how uneven the provision is. There is huge regional disparity. Of the top 150 state secondary schools, 38 are in the southeast, but only one is in the northeast. There is also asymmetry in the school types. Only 20 of the top 150 are comprehensives, with the rest either grammar schools (121) or partly selective (9).
All the comprehensives, however, are selective in some way. Twelve are faith-based. Six are Jewish — astonishingly, almost half of all Jewish secondary schools. Five are Christian and one is Muslim. Two are boarding schools where education is state-funded, but there is a charge for boarding. The rest are in prosperous areas so, in effect, it is selection by house prices".