The other wild card that goes into this statistical minestrone (to mix metaphors, if I may) Is that some schools get a lot of "additional admissions" between 11 and 16. Children moving into area, mainly, or kids chucked out of other schools. Could be a dozen or more per year, LAs are obliged to find places for them and if you are an LA school with theoretical spaces you get leaned on, heavily.
So if you are a less popular school to start with you get all the poor little disrupted kids whose parents are moving in and out with partners or parents - from across the borough (not just your catchment). Ditto ones arriving from Europe, Africa and troubled middle eastern countries like Afghanistan. Many of these don't speak English. The worst ones we ever had were Afghani asylum seekers who were, we believed to be over 18 (and who were accused by a 13 year old of sexual assault outside school) and one young man that was probably an ex child soldier who obviously had some severe mental health issues. And kids taken into care - which included the unaccompanied asylum seekers.
Of course the most popular schools tend to be full and don't have to accept all these additional problems. In the case of the last boy, the alarm bells were ringing so loudly from the first visit, that he was only allowed in on trial (not officially on roll at all). It did not work.
Even if they don't appear on the exam statistics they require a lot of resources.
I think academies are probably better placed to fend off LA pressure - but not sure of their legal position.
Good Morning Good Friday 29th March 2024
Shall we reboot our cartoons thread again? 😁