A Level Achievement in Southwark

[DuncanW]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36469254

Has anyone else seen this? Apparently Southwark has the 6th worst A Level uptake in England with just 18% of students from Southwark taking A Levels. I'm not sure about the data though as it appears to be counting only those that are studying in-borough.

[nunheadmum]

But don't a lot of kids from this area go out of borough? A lot of the secondaries that we will be considering are Lewisham and I expect there are those going to Lambeth on the other side of ED.

Like a lot of these stats, you need to did deeper than the headline to find the info that really needs to be acted on. But I'm sure there are areas where it is an issue and the travel distances will affect the decisions of kids, which seems unfair.

[LondonMix]

So are they taking the entire population of young people in Southwark and dividing that by the number state pupils taking A-levels? That's absurd.

In addition to not including children studying in Lewisham etc, it would exclude young people in private school rather than state school.

In Southwark that would create significant distortions as well.

[Renata Hamvas]

I would agree with nunheadmum, due to good transport links from Southwark and as not every school has a sixth form or offers subjects that a student wishes to study and we haven't got a further education college that is geared towards A levels, many go out of Borough. If the stats were examined I would expect to find we do have a significant proportion of sixth formers doing A levels in Lewisham.For example St Thomas the Apostle until this year was only up to GCSE level and then all pupils had to move on. Many will have gone to Haberdashers Aske Hatcham, as this has 8 forms in each 6th form year, so is very large. There is also Crossways and Christ the King Sixth Form Colleges close to the Borough boundaries, also in Lewisham. I know of teenagers who have gone to school in Southwark and are now in sixth forms/ colleges further afield eg in Croydon as their school sixth form didn't do a subject they were interested in. Some move to specialistic music establishments such as Purcell or to the Brit School. If the stats were examined I would expect to find we do have alot of sixth formers doing A levels in Lewisham.It would have been far more meaningful to have the figures for proportion of sixth form aged residents of each Borough studying A levels.

I think due to mobility, which is far greater for 16-18 year olds than 11 year olds, this is a meaningless study as it stands for the London Boroughs.

Renata

[uncleglen]

It's a very misleading figure the BBC should be ashamed for not checking how misleading the figures are and the absurdity of the language of their reporting given the real situation