We’ve been running an “Ask the Principal” facility on the College intranet recently. Students can ask anything about the College – and it won’t surprise you that they do! Food has been a significant theme, with some useful suggestions for the refectory menus. They are also asking about the space in Oak, the last of our buildings, due to be opened in a matter of weeks, now. This is an issue because the recent bad weather has created significant pressure on the space for students to occupy at lunchtimes. I’m glad that I am able to tell them that this is precisely one of the needs we had identified in the planning of the building. In Oak, as well as the huge library, for working in when not eating, there is a larger refectory and a central circulation space through which seating will be distributed. With the learning areas in Ash and plans we’re drawing up for a cafetaria area in the Wilson Building, we hope to have space for all when all the construction work is complete.
Of course, in better weather, the huge campus garden space between the three buildings will remove any pressure on internal space.
The need for all this space is growing though. The College has been rebuilt for about 1300 students and current indications are that it will not be long before that figure is exceeded. Applications are flooding in! I mention this now because if you are reading here and planning an application for a place — lose no time in getting it in! For the last two years we have had to turn away late applications. The definition of late is changing, though. As a date in the calendar it is rushing forward. We will try to continue to take applications for as long as we can but the funding available for places is constrained – as is everything in current financial conditions. Don’t wait.
It is no surprise that so many young people want to come to Wyke, perhaps. The figures demonstrate the advantages very clearly. There are lots of ways in which success is measured and we’re delighted that Wyke students come out so strongly across the whole range of them. The latest to be published are the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) Achievement and Attainment Tables. You can find these at
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/performancetables/16to18_08.shtml
The essentials are that Wyke students achieve the highest average points score per student of any state college or school in East Yorkshire or Hull. You can tell that students are leaving a school or college well-equipped for their futures if this is a relatively high figure. The England average for publicly funded post-16 education is 721. In Hull and the East Riding, the scores range from 832.5 down to 586. The average points score in the city of Hull is 743 and in the East Riding it is smack down on the England average, at 721.
That last fact often surprises people. After all, at GCSE, the two authorities are miles apart in the opposite direction. Research comes up with interesting answers. 18 year olds in Hull – predomiinantly in the sixth form colleges – do very well on this average compared to authorities across the Humber, too. The score for NE Lincs is 691 and for North Lincs it is 737. Leeds is down at 694, Sheffield at 682.5. The story is similar in Bradford and Barnsley and Doncaster. Why?
The way education is organised has the most significant effect. Where there are sixth form colleges – as in Hull, Huddersfield and Wakefield – average points scores per student are much higher, year on year. In a sixth form college students choose from more courses and complete more courses. Because sixth form colleges take many students and have high averages, the local authority scores are dominated by their better outcomes. Hull got it right, educationally, in 1988, when it changed to a sixth form college system.
What about the average points score per entry. These are often impressive. They show something about how high grades were. They don’t tell you where the students started, of course. Many private and selective schools show high averages. The students may have started with averages of A*, A and B grades at GCSE, though. So how far have they travelled?
They might have gone further than average after two years in the sixth form. They might have travelled the average distance. They might have coasted to success. To try to show which is the case – for all students – the government is publishing a contextualised value-added score. This is quite a challenge. Contexts are complicated. The statisticians don’t claim to have got it right yet. The bigger the ‘confidence interval’, the less reliable the result but I’m afraid even this confidence interval does not cover all aspects of reliability.
So what does all that add up to? The average points score per student is a good guide to the overall outcomes that any school or college is achieving with its students. You can tweak this assessment by looking at the other two scores but beware, the contextualised value-added score is massively distorted by unindicative things like whether all the students do a general studies A level or not.
Here’s a little HANDY GUIDE:
Average points score per student
Each A level (or equivalent) grade counts for a given number of points. All the grades added together as a total number of points for each student. Then the average score is calculated.
It shows the worth of the full package of achievement for students leaving. It’s a good indication of how well AND how much they have done.
Average points score per entry
This is the average achievement in each subject the students have taken.
It indicates how high, on average their grades were – but not how much progress they made.
Contextual Value-added score
A calculation of students’ achievements in context of their individual starting points and their background and several other factors.
Something about how well all students are doing regardless of where they started. Tricky, though. Look at the “confidence interval” numbers. They’re there because there are many distorting factors in the sums.
