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| St Olave’s controversy is tip of iceberg in system obsessed with results | |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| I am glad to see leading academic schools’ practice of weeding out underperforming pupils to bolster their A-level league table position coming under the spotlight (Grammar school ‘unlawfully threw out’ students who failed to get top grades, 30 August). This behaviour has to be widespread at the top of the league tables: in any cohort of teenagers there will be some whose adolescence is not plain sailing, and the proportions of A-star and A grades published by “top” schools are simply unrealistic, unless they are the result of ruthlessly throwing out those likely to get B and C grades. | I am glad to see leading academic schools’ practice of weeding out underperforming pupils to bolster their A-level league table position coming under the spotlight (Grammar school ‘unlawfully threw out’ students who failed to get top grades, 30 August). This behaviour has to be widespread at the top of the league tables: in any cohort of teenagers there will be some whose adolescence is not plain sailing, and the proportions of A-star and A grades published by “top” schools are simply unrealistic, unless they are the result of ruthlessly throwing out those likely to get B and C grades. |
| The result is that young people who have achieved well enough at 16 to be accepted by these highly selective sixth forms are having to change school halfway through their A-levels, and are likely to end up with qualifications far below their potential. When a school prioritises its league table position, it suits its interests better for a pupil to get no A-levels once off their hands, than for that pupil to get mediocre A-levels while still on the school roll. The pupils involved and their families don’t usually make a fuss, because they are humiliated and don’t want to identify the young person. | The result is that young people who have achieved well enough at 16 to be accepted by these highly selective sixth forms are having to change school halfway through their A-levels, and are likely to end up with qualifications far below their potential. When a school prioritises its league table position, it suits its interests better for a pupil to get no A-levels once off their hands, than for that pupil to get mediocre A-levels while still on the school roll. The pupils involved and their families don’t usually make a fuss, because they are humiliated and don’t want to identify the young person. |
| I would like to see the league tables show the number of students who started the A-level course two years earlier, alongside the number taking the exams (just as university league tables incorporate completion rates). This would incentivise schools to do their best for all the pupils they admit for A-level courses, not just the ones with no problems.Lucy BinneyOxford | I would like to see the league tables show the number of students who started the A-level course two years earlier, alongside the number taking the exams (just as university league tables incorporate completion rates). This would incentivise schools to do their best for all the pupils they admit for A-level courses, not just the ones with no problems.Lucy BinneyOxford |
| • The culling of year 12 students who might possibly lower the school’s results next year is not only shameful but short-sighted. Learners develop at different rates. With A-levels now linear, the final grades will depend solely on next summer’s exams, by which time these rejected students may well have caught up. It doesn’t say much for the school’s confidence in their teachers that they’re unwilling to give these youngsters the chance to do so. | • The culling of year 12 students who might possibly lower the school’s results next year is not only shameful but short-sighted. Learners develop at different rates. With A-levels now linear, the final grades will depend solely on next summer’s exams, by which time these rejected students may well have caught up. It doesn’t say much for the school’s confidence in their teachers that they’re unwilling to give these youngsters the chance to do so. |
| While those responsible for the policy put their own kudos ahead of students’ needs, the media’s tendency to highlight only the successes of these highly selective schools doesn’t help. Those who support students of all abilities to the highest grades they can achieve, even if those grades end up at C or below, are of course well used to this, but then we didn’t enter teaching to make the headlines. Shame on St Olave’s. David Hampton (Sixth-form teacher), London | While those responsible for the policy put their own kudos ahead of students’ needs, the media’s tendency to highlight only the successes of these highly selective schools doesn’t help. Those who support students of all abilities to the highest grades they can achieve, even if those grades end up at C or below, are of course well used to this, but then we didn’t enter teaching to make the headlines. Shame on St Olave’s. David Hampton (Sixth-form teacher), London |
| • It is high time that a school is taken to task for the widespread practice of “dumping” students at the end of year 12 and it is not just confined to grammar schools. This practice is also commonplace in many London comprehensives. Over the last 10 years interviewing in an FE college each September, I have been faced with many distraught students in this situation. For the record, could headteachers who do this stop telling students they will easily get an FE college to take them for year 13. In reality this is next to impossible. These students are just being cynically abandoned to sink or swim. Often they sink! This is not in their best interests. Jane Weake (Former progression director at an FE college), London | • It is high time that a school is taken to task for the widespread practice of “dumping” students at the end of year 12 and it is not just confined to grammar schools. This practice is also commonplace in many London comprehensives. Over the last 10 years interviewing in an FE college each September, I have been faced with many distraught students in this situation. For the record, could headteachers who do this stop telling students they will easily get an FE college to take them for year 13. In reality this is next to impossible. These students are just being cynically abandoned to sink or swim. Often they sink! This is not in their best interests. Jane Weake (Former progression director at an FE college), London |
| • Had North London Collegiate School ejected me in 1968, halfway through sixth form, for unpromising prospective results in my A-levels, I might not have gone on to art college and become a teacher in schools, adult and further education. I later experienced the pressure to produce “good” results as a manager in further education. | • Had North London Collegiate School ejected me in 1968, halfway through sixth form, for unpromising prospective results in my A-levels, I might not have gone on to art college and become a teacher in schools, adult and further education. I later experienced the pressure to produce “good” results as a manager in further education. |
| I was cheered by Robert Winston’s comments on a recent You and Yours programme on BBC Radio 4 when he pointed out that what is seldom mentioned is whether people are happy in their lives. It’s not all about where you go to school and what your exam results are like. Alison Churchill Lichfield, Staffordshire | I was cheered by Robert Winston’s comments on a recent You and Yours programme on BBC Radio 4 when he pointed out that what is seldom mentioned is whether people are happy in their lives. It’s not all about where you go to school and what your exam results are like. Alison Churchill Lichfield, Staffordshire |
| • While schools are under enormous pressure to deliver results they will cheat. Who says so? Not only me but also Durham University’s Professor Rob Coe in evidence to a House of Commons committee investigating primary school assessment. Bromley’s St Olave’s grammar school dumping 13 weaker A-level students is just the tip of the iceberg. Exclusions are on the up. Thirty five children a day are sent packing. Junior schools can’t deliver progress targets because infant teachers are manipulating key stage 1 assessment to their advantage. The parliamentary inquiry, even with its Tory majority, concluded that high-stakes testing was harming teaching and learning. St Olave’s is just another example of how it’s harming children too.Philip KerridgeBodmin, Cornwall | • While schools are under enormous pressure to deliver results they will cheat. Who says so? Not only me but also Durham University’s Professor Rob Coe in evidence to a House of Commons committee investigating primary school assessment. Bromley’s St Olave’s grammar school dumping 13 weaker A-level students is just the tip of the iceberg. Exclusions are on the up. Thirty five children a day are sent packing. Junior schools can’t deliver progress targets because infant teachers are manipulating key stage 1 assessment to their advantage. The parliamentary inquiry, even with its Tory majority, concluded that high-stakes testing was harming teaching and learning. St Olave’s is just another example of how it’s harming children too.Philip KerridgeBodmin, Cornwall |
| • As an Old Olavian who left in 1980 with an A, B and E grade at A-level, I was surprised to read of the school’s policy of removing pupils midway through sixth form if they failed to attain a B in all of their subjects. If such a punitive system had been in operation when I was at the school then I, and most of my schoolmates, would have been asked to leave, and it is unlikely that I would have gone on to complete a PhD, teach at the University of London, publish over 100 scientific papers, and build a successful scientific consultancy. | • As an Old Olavian who left in 1980 with an A, B and E grade at A-level, I was surprised to read of the school’s policy of removing pupils midway through sixth form if they failed to attain a B in all of their subjects. If such a punitive system had been in operation when I was at the school then I, and most of my schoolmates, would have been asked to leave, and it is unlikely that I would have gone on to complete a PhD, teach at the University of London, publish over 100 scientific papers, and build a successful scientific consultancy. |
| The senior management team at St Olave’s need to rethink this shameful policy before it damages more of the young people in their care.Mark Crane(Environmental toxicologist), Faringdon, Oxfordshire | The senior management team at St Olave’s need to rethink this shameful policy before it damages more of the young people in their care.Mark Crane(Environmental toxicologist), Faringdon, Oxfordshire |
| • What astonishes me most about the furore over St Olave’s, and its decision to “demote” students who might have a negative effect on its position in the A-level league tables, is that anyone is still astonished that this should have happened. | • What astonishes me most about the furore over St Olave’s, and its decision to “demote” students who might have a negative effect on its position in the A-level league tables, is that anyone is still astonished that this should have happened. |
| A simple internet search will unearth multiple examples of the tens of thousands of young people who are “lost” from schools’ registers each year, of the invitations to parents to consider “fresh starts” for their sons and daughters, of academies paying other academies to take their less successful students off their hands. If exam performance remains the major driver of the Ofsted inspection regime, and thus the judgment most likely to affect a headteacher’s job prospects, only a fool would be surprised that desperate men and women will sometimes resort to desperate measures. | A simple internet search will unearth multiple examples of the tens of thousands of young people who are “lost” from schools’ registers each year, of the invitations to parents to consider “fresh starts” for their sons and daughters, of academies paying other academies to take their less successful students off their hands. If exam performance remains the major driver of the Ofsted inspection regime, and thus the judgment most likely to affect a headteacher’s job prospects, only a fool would be surprised that desperate men and women will sometimes resort to desperate measures. |
| The parents who are now seeking legal redress against St Olave’s should count themselves lucky it is a maintained school, and as such governed by laws that make what amounts to an exclusion on these grounds illegal. The government’s drive to turn all schools into academies will effectively close off such an option for all but the most determined, and wealthy, parents.Chris Dunne(Retired headteacher), Campaign for State Education, London | The parents who are now seeking legal redress against St Olave’s should count themselves lucky it is a maintained school, and as such governed by laws that make what amounts to an exclusion on these grounds illegal. The government’s drive to turn all schools into academies will effectively close off such an option for all but the most determined, and wealthy, parents.Chris Dunne(Retired headteacher), Campaign for State Education, London |
| • Huge sympathy for the kids, but for the parents… which bit of “grammar school” and “selective education” and “only the best” did they not understand? Presumably the spare spaces are going to children who did better than their children? As some of us keep saying: grammar schools are popular with winners. No one who supports them ever considers for a moment – at least in any article I’ve ever read – that their child might not make the grade, metaphorically or literally.Farah MendlesohnStoke-on-Trent | • Huge sympathy for the kids, but for the parents… which bit of “grammar school” and “selective education” and “only the best” did they not understand? Presumably the spare spaces are going to children who did better than their children? As some of us keep saying: grammar schools are popular with winners. No one who supports them ever considers for a moment – at least in any article I’ve ever read – that their child might not make the grade, metaphorically or literally.Farah MendlesohnStoke-on-Trent |
| • While you are right to highlight what appears to be happening around St Olave’s and “a number of other schools”, it is hardly a surprise. I taught in post-16 for over 30 years. Particularly in recent years the only thing that matters has been success rates. Falling results, and a resulting poor Ofsted, are disasters for all concerned. “Persuading” weaker students to leave has thus become commonplace. I don’t blame the schools and colleges involved. The emphasis successive governments have placed on league table standings is the real driver of this crazy system.Declan O’NeillOldham, Greater Manchester | • While you are right to highlight what appears to be happening around St Olave’s and “a number of other schools”, it is hardly a surprise. I taught in post-16 for over 30 years. Particularly in recent years the only thing that matters has been success rates. Falling results, and a resulting poor Ofsted, are disasters for all concerned. “Persuading” weaker students to leave has thus become commonplace. I don’t blame the schools and colleges involved. The emphasis successive governments have placed on league table standings is the real driver of this crazy system.Declan O’NeillOldham, Greater Manchester |
| • Schools rejecting “underperforming” sixth-formers is not new. I was advised to leave my boys grammar school in 1979, having just completed my O-levels. The school operated streaming and there were 30 in the A stream and 60 in the B stream. Only one of my fellow B streamers got as far as taking his A-levels. And this was before targets, but image and prestige were just as pernicious. (By the way, I am now a university lecturer.)Andrew VincentCheltenham, Gloucestershire | • Schools rejecting “underperforming” sixth-formers is not new. I was advised to leave my boys grammar school in 1979, having just completed my O-levels. The school operated streaming and there were 30 in the A stream and 60 in the B stream. Only one of my fellow B streamers got as far as taking his A-levels. And this was before targets, but image and prestige were just as pernicious. (By the way, I am now a university lecturer.)Andrew VincentCheltenham, Gloucestershire |
| • If I remember rightly, the first line of St Olave’s school song was “Olave to right the wrong”. Time to live up to the claim.Michael Cunningham (St Olave’s 1970-77), Wolverhampton | • If I remember rightly, the first line of St Olave’s school song was “Olave to right the wrong”. Time to live up to the claim.Michael Cunningham (St Olave’s 1970-77), Wolverhampton |
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