I've got three children going through school at the moment. As it happens, the area where we live in the North West has a number of good primary and secondary schools, and quite a few independent schools as well. But we're not from round here and want to move back down south as soon as possible. My contracts are often down there or in Europe anyway.
So, we go looking for schools. Places we've looked, like parts of London or counties south of London all seem to have one decent secondary school and loads of frankly rubbish ones. This is judging purely by exam results. The one good school in each place is always massively oversubscribed. One place we contacted has a waiting list with 77 people on it, just for Year 7.
The question is, though, are the schools which have poor exam results actually that bad? I'm talking about 60% A*-C passes, or whatever the standard measurement is. Is that actually bad, or are the 95%+ schools just freaks? Do poor exam results really point to schools with horrendous discipline and no real culture of learning, or can they in fact be really pleasant places where hard workers will excel, and the schools just get dragged down in the stats because the pupils are simply not that academic?
I went to a fairly highly regarded comprehensive but was useless at exams and came out with practically nothing on paper. There was nothing much wrong with the place though. Only very minor bullying and that, no big deal.
If it was only one child then I might go for an independent place, but three is stretching it too far.
Anyone with good experiences of a "bad" school?
So, we go looking for schools. Places we've looked, like parts of London or counties south of London all seem to have one decent secondary school and loads of frankly rubbish ones. This is judging purely by exam results. The one good school in each place is always massively oversubscribed. One place we contacted has a waiting list with 77 people on it, just for Year 7.
The question is, though, are the schools which have poor exam results actually that bad? I'm talking about 60% A*-C passes, or whatever the standard measurement is. Is that actually bad, or are the 95%+ schools just freaks? Do poor exam results really point to schools with horrendous discipline and no real culture of learning, or can they in fact be really pleasant places where hard workers will excel, and the schools just get dragged down in the stats because the pupils are simply not that academic?
I went to a fairly highly regarded comprehensive but was useless at exams and came out with practically nothing on paper. There was nothing much wrong with the place though. Only very minor bullying and that, no big deal.
If it was only one child then I might go for an independent place, but three is stretching it too far.
Anyone with good experiences of a "bad" school?
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