5 "good" GCSE's HARD?

I always remember a story my uncle told about disipline when he was at high school..

First day of a new headteacher and as he had walked in had been a fight in the playground outside.. so in assembly he had asked the gentlemen involed to own up... ofc no one did... so one by one he cained every male pupil in the school... and then asked again for the gentlemen in question to own up... no one did.. so they all got a second cain... 3rd time round when he asked a couple of people pointed to the ones involved who then got a 3rd beating.. suffice to say there were no more fights in the school playground
 
Not all schools with low % scores for 5+ A*-C are rubbish schools. The school I teach at averages around 50% (of 850 kids) that achieve 5+. We are rated 'Outstanding' by Ofsted, following an inspection last October. We also get a very high CVA score (second in the City IIRC) - which means we do bloody well with the kids we get from our primaries.

We're a good school, we have good staff and we have a lot of great kids too - some finish Year 10 with 4 GCSEs and some finish Year 11 with about 6 GCSEs from ICT and Technology alone. But it's very hard to combat the attitude of half the kids who simply see little value in academic success. Many have successful parents who run landscape gardening, block paving, roofing etc business and are quite happy to work with dad with nothing on their CV at 16. One lad even said to me last year 'you can't earn any money in IT anyway'... He couldn't even tell me who Bill Gates was. He didn't care that old Bill just to happens to have made a lot of money from IT.

Until we can shift this attitude, there's a very firm ceiling on our results. I'm sure we would get exceptionally high results if more of the kids had more academic backgrounds.
 
Why is it 5 A*-C inc. english and maths? Didn't it use to be maths, english AND science.
Also why is it people are struggling with science these days, I heard science A-levels are a whole grade harder than other ones. I found them ok, I got 94 in my physics a-level.

I don't know what goes through the unaffluent/unprospective (also mentioned as scum above) parents' heads, If I wasn't getting very far in life, and I had a kid, I'd want the best for that kid and I'd want it to have all the things that I didn't get, which means they have to work at school. So I'd push them.
Then again, the peers of the children are also a huge factor in their behavour.
 
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I dont think it has a great deal to do with intelligence or teaching ability, the schools with sub 10% a*-c will likely have the highest truancy levels, have lots of people walk out from or not turn up to exams
 
quick note:


A couple of people have mentioned "scum" and they might be refering to my rather large post earlier.

The "scum" i was refering to did not mean uneducated people or low income families.

I meant that a lot of the unteachable kids come from families where no one works by choice, most are criminals and drink/smoke all day and never get dressed. They bring the kids to school at 11.00 in the morning in dressing gowns and stink of vodka ( ive seen this myself on several occasions ).

These are the kind of parents who barely feed the children, send them to school in filthy uniforms with worn out shoes yet claim vast amounts of benefits- most of which probably get spent on fags and booze- the kids certainly dont seem to benefit much from it.

Some of the kids see their mothers/fathers beaten senseless each day by agressive partners and even draw pictures in class showing it ( heartbreaking to see a 5 yr old child drawing a pic of his mother with two blackeyes and a bloody nose and him thinking its normal ).

Im sorry if anyone thought i was refering to normal but poor/uneducated people, i wasnt.
 
aproctor said:
I was reading this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7568511.stm and noticed that to the right are some stats for the worst performing schools.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7444059.stm

Now as you scroll down you see a lot of 25% which shocked me, but it is not as bad as John Madejski Academy....5% get 5 GCSE's at C grade or above.

How can this be called a school? surely otters could teach better.
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So it is the teachers fault that the lot of kids did not see education as a priority? Horse to water springs to mind.
 
Pneumonic said:
I always remember a story my uncle told about disipline when he was at high school..

First day of a new headteacher and as he had walked in had been a fight in the playground outside.. so in assembly he had asked the gentlemen involed to own up... ofc no one did... so one by one he cained every male pupil in the school... and then asked again for the gentlemen in question to own up... no one did.. so they all got a second cain... 3rd time round when he asked a couple of people pointed to the ones involved who then got a 3rd beating.. suffice to say there were no more fights in the school playground
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It will never come back, despite being proven. Shame but nowadays the kids just bleat on about rights. Rule with a iron fist is what I say.
 
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Well that pretty much backs up my view that all the schools in my area are **** and I shouldn't send my kids to them (when I have kids). School kicking out time is like a sea of little rudeboys and troublemakers, I DON'T want my kids to turn in to that, thankyou.

Good post from AtreuS too :)
 
AtreuS said:
What the poster above said is very true.

I do IT support in primary schools and i have seen good and bad teaching, good and bad kids and good and bad buildings.

No doubt someone will respond with "well the teachers arent doing their job!! control the kids or expel them!" etc etc. Well the kids know that the teaching staff cant lay a bloody finger on them for fear of being sued or losing their job, the kids are actively told by their parents to put teachers in difficult situations as part of the little war they like to play against authority.

The mere suggestion of a teacher manhandling a small child is enough to ruin a career and the parents/kids know it. And if you expel kids at the rates needed to restore order the local goverment inspector is on the case and then the staff get replaced. The teachers in some areas are simply just trying to get by from day to day without being sacked or accused of something!
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Not just "ruin a career" but end it. If you are guilty of what would be termed 'child abuse' you can kiss your career goodbye. Your record is checked through 'disclosure' documents before you start a job and anything on the record and you are not allowed to work with children.
 
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PaulStat said:
^^ nice post, why do scum exist? I can never figure this out, why can't everyone be decent with a good sense of responsibility/morality? It's really not that hard.
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Err, it's quite simple really. It's just the world around them, their experiences and so on, that mould them into the people they are. It's really as simple as that. Chances are if you were born into their shoes and experienced everything they have, you'd be exactly the same. You don't choose to become a scumbag, you are made into one.
 
KittensCake said:
Err, it's quite simple really. It's just the world around them, their experiences and so on, that mould them into the people they are. It's really as simple as that. Chances are if you were born into their shoes and experienced everything they have, you'd be exactly the same. You don't choose to become a scumbag, you are made into one.
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I understand that, but it's a bit like the chicken and the egg type thing. One of them somewhere along the line must have come from a decent family, what made them diverge.
 
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