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Reply 40
AisAis
It's all very well saying that you can work yourself even if the teachers are poor, but it's so difficult when you have to do it in LOADS of subjects. They aren't designed to be studied like that. It's so tiring having no feedback whatsoever.

I go to a comprehensive that gets lots of people Cs because they give all the good teachers to the lower sets, and everyone else, and people in lower school, have utterly appalling teachers.

I did end up with 4A*s and 5As (and 2Bs) but I know there's subjects I could have done better in. For example NO ONE in my school got an A* in art (and over 250ish took it), but I have friends whose schools always have at least a handful. Does that mean that everyone in those particular schools is more talented?

My teachers were especially useless in RS, English, Eng lit., maths, biology, art (2 subjects), and my chemistry teacher was away for most of the year and nobody at the school could cover our class or find us work. We didn't even finish the syllabi in most of them!

Sometimes - far too often - I felt like I didn't have time to waste the whole day in school because I knew we wouldn't do anything in lessons and I knew I had so much to learn. I only got my grades because I stole textbooks from cupboards to teach myself, printed past papers and specifications (in science they didn't know what the triple class had to cover, so just gave us double science work and a few A’ level sheets and said they didn't know if we had to know that or not!) I did ALL the work for English myself. ALL of it.

I know I can’t complain because I still got really good grades, but I can’t help feel disappointed with some of them, and feel that having proper teachers would have helped.


Opps, turned into a bit of a rant didn't that!


That is exactly the same with me, even stealing text books (returning them later to some mildly surprised teachers though). Now who here actually thinks that at a private/grammar school they waste whole days like this? Literally whole days where we spent lessons doing nothing apart from copying from textbooks or off the board. Copying stuff that the teachers weren't sure were on the syllabus or not.

And also to everyone who's saying that "if u wanted 2 get dem A*s m8 u cud ov dun it eazily!11" shut up because 350 people in our school took the exams this year and only 7 got 5A*s or over. Now I'm sure if these people were capable of doing so well in FIVE subjects they should have done just aswell in the others. But no, I know for a fact that 3 of them got at least 1 C. Why? because the teacher teaching that subject gave them no clue as to what they were doing. I mean I know from personal experience that from some subjects i was able to suss out some info as to what exactly we had to cover and did the rest from there but these people did not get any help whatsoever. WOULD THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN A PRIVATE SCHOOL?

Also during the year, half our class got suspended for 3 days cos some smart guys decided to play basketball in one of our lessons when no teacher showed up. They smashed 2 lights in and we all got in trouble for it.. would that have happened at your school? 3 days is quite a lot of time and the suspension goes on your permanent record. I highly doubt it. So don't try telling me that I could have got 11 A*s if I wanted to.
Reply 41
I agree with a lot of this stuff.

My school was so focused on getting the lower sets up to a C so they wouldn't look so bad in league tables that the upper sets got basically ignored. That would never happen in a private school.

We got our English teacher taken from us and only had him once a week. The other teacher we had never did anything but sit there... every now and then she'd talk about completely unrelated things but we were never given proper work. Then with our one lesson a week with a proper teacher he tried but he found it almost impossible as he rarely saw us!
I was predicted an A* in both literature and language but only got an A* in lit with an A in lang.

The same thing happened with our maths teacher- except that we never saw her. She left us for '2 weeks' to sort out set 4. We never saw her again. The teacher we got wasn't totally incompetant but she was a difficult woman. She assumed we already knew everything- which was not true because we'd already had 4 teachers. She would not teach us things because she thought it was silly and if we didn't know it we had no hope.

You see, in year 10 our first teacher refused to teach us as 'she couldn't handle having a top set' and 'it wasn't fair'. She then got fired after a few complaints. We then got a good teacher but he became bitter about another teacher moving away and getting a promotion. So he basically stopped teaching and then left. This was 2 terms gone. For the third term we got a teacher who moaned constantly about his bad leg and then tried to get the smartest kid in the class to teach us instead. He often had days when he said he didn't want to teach. Needless to say he got fired too. So for the last term of year 10 we had a supply teacher who was, amazingly, a PE teacher (who was extremely bad at maths and read magazines all lesson). Guess how much learning we got done?
So, yes, then came year 11 when we had a teacher for less than a term before she gave us over to that other teacher.
Our class, supposedly the best in the school, managed to get mostly Cs and Us in the mocks. Luckily we mostly got A*s, As and Bs in the actual exam (mine was due to a maths tutor).

As for teachers not turning up? We had 4 English lessons where we never had a supply. In most of them we actually did get on with work because my set was actually quite good (we even did the register) but in any other class that would have been hell.

People were also often ditching class and I would see them all of the time if sent on an errand or such. I know that people would often not turn up to my science lessons or extra people would appear from other sets and talk constantly through them. The teacher didn't even notice.

We also didn't get study leave. We had revision sessions all of the time in school and were not allowed to leave even on request of our parents. Most of the revision sessions were crowded (my maths one had about 45 people in a room to sit 30... and a group of us ended up getting a class and revising alone). We barely got any work done in the sessions as people were noisy and disruptive and they were often about 3 and a half hours long of just one subject- which is almost unbearable- especially just before an exam. It was awful. I remember one session they put on during the holidays where a teacher didn't turn up for an hour and then another where 5 guys at the back talked non-stop and the teacher kept telling them to leave and they said they'd be quiet- never happened.

None of this would ever happen in a private school.

Sorry for that rant...
I think its a fault in comprehensives that they'r geared up for little miss and mr average...so anyone above or below that category and their needs are forgotten. I was pretty lucky for the main subjects (english, maths n science) that I had extremely competent teachers tht were very nice and caring. Our school just had lots of very very bad systems. Like the "raise a grade" system, they changed our reports so we got an attainment grade, a letter for classwork effort H=high G=good I=inconsistent F=fail, the same for homework and a comment code.
We never got the chance for our parents to see our subject teachers, for our parent consultation, we only saw our form tutor.....n she never taught us!!!!!
They also took away our study leave:frown: I honestly think I could'v done better if i'd been allowed to study at home. In school we were set a revision program which made no sense cos they made us revise chemistry n physics before our biology exam:mad: :mad: :mad: :s-smilie: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the hell was that all about?!?!
So by the afternoon of the biology exam...i missed my lunch n revised instead...trying to get chemistry and physics out of my head. I nearly went to the head master I was so furious!!!
So hence why I am changing sixth forms :p: !! I only blame this on the new deputy head...cos it was her idea to put it in place. We don't get on very well cos I speak my mind :p: !

K xxx
Reply 43
Rennie
I agree with a lot of this stuff.

My school was so focused on getting the lower sets up to a C so they wouldn't look so bad in league tables that the upper sets got basically ignored. That would never happen in a private school.

We got our English teacher taken from us and only had him once a week. The other teacher we had never did anything but sit there... every now and then she'd talk about completely unrelated things but we were never given proper work. Then with our one lesson a week with a proper teacher he tried but he found it almost impossible as he rarely saw us!
I was predicted an A* in both literature and language but only got an A* in lit with an A in lang.

The same thing happened with our maths teacher- except that we never saw her. She left us for '2 weeks' to sort out set 4. We never saw her again. The teacher we got wasn't totally incompetant but she was a difficult woman. She assumed we already knew everything- which was not true because we'd already had 4 teachers. She would not teach us things because she thought it was silly and if we didn't know it we had no hope.

You see, in year 10 our first teacher refused to teach us as 'she couldn't handle having a top set' and 'it wasn't fair'. She then got fired after a few complaints. We then got a good teacher but he became bitter about another teacher moving away and getting a promotion. So he basically stopped teaching and then left. This was 2 terms gone. For the third term we got a teacher who moaned constantly about his bad leg and then tried to get the smartest kid in the class to teach us instead. He often had days when he said he didn't want to teach. Needless to say he got fired too. So for the last term of year 10 we had a supply teacher who was, amazingly, a PE teacher (who was extremely bad at maths and read magazines all lesson). Guess how much learning we got done?
So, yes, then came year 11 when we had a teacher for less than a term before she gave us over to that other teacher.
Our class, supposedly the best in the school, managed to get mostly Cs and Us in the mocks. Luckily we mostly got A*s, As and Bs in the actual exam (mine was due to a maths tutor).

As for teachers not turning up? We had 4 English lessons where we never had a supply. In most of them we actually did get on with work because my set was actually quite good (we even did the register) but in any other class that would have been hell.

People were also often ditching class and I would see them all of the time if sent on an errand or such. I know that people would often not turn up to my science lessons or extra people would appear from other sets and talk constantly through them. The teacher didn't even notice.

We also didn't get study leave. We had revision sessions all of the time in school and were not allowed to leave even on request of our parents. Most of the revision sessions were crowded (my maths one had about 45 people in a room to sit 30... and a group of us ended up getting a class and revising alone). We barely got any work done in the sessions as people were noisy and disruptive and they were often about 3 and a half hours long of just one subject- which is almost unbearable- especially just before an exam. It was awful. I remember one session they put on during the holidays where a teacher didn't turn up for an hour and then another where 5 guys at the back talked non-stop and the teacher kept telling them to leave and they said they'd be quiet- never happened.

None of this would ever happen in a private school.

Sorry for that rant...


Wow, and you still managed A's and A*s. Well done! :biggrin:
Reply 44
ninetyeights
the reason i didn't go to state school was because of the bullying/suicide problem in our local state schools...

:mad: excuse me?!
u think going to a private school exempts people from such kind of problems?!
Reply 45
b9muslove
Wow, and you still managed A's and A*s. Well done! :biggrin:


Thanks.

I knew almost nothing about physics but my friend held revision sessions at her house after school. I don't think I'd have ever gotten my A*s in science without that.
Reply 46
Also, in my school there was a limit on the amount of GCSEs you could do because they thought it was unfair on others. My mum went in and gave them a right ear-bashing and i was actually lucky to do more than 9.

And Rennie, that was kind of the same with us tbh.. we had an english teacher who was gonna retire so didn't care about anything. We got one coursework done in the first year and if she didn't get sacked we would never have done any of the others on time. She used to make us have discussions about random things like different accents in the UK. We complained to our head of year loads of time but he did nothing.
Reply 47
Stanley90
We complained to our head of year loads of time but he did nothing.


That's what I hate about schools- they often don't care. It took a lot for us to get rid of our first maths teacher. She ended up kicking me out of the class for no reason and I complained to the assistant head. She then let me write a statement and only then did they take our class off of her... then a few weeks later she left.
Reply 48
In one of our maths lessons with a supply teacher the smartest guy in the class got kicked out for trying to explain something to someone next to him, crazy man..
Reply 49
Meh stop complaining about your lack of study leave :P I honestly believe I would've done better if we didn't have study leave. I spent days doing nothing, playing games, and most of my revision was crowded into 1 or 2 days before the exam. I couldn't bring myself to study when there were so many distractions, so in a sense, study leave would have been a great help.

I also think that half the reason private schools do better is because of pressure from parents. Because the parents are spending loads on your education, it would make sense they want you to do well. And so they would be more likely to be interested in your work, and possibly be more encouraging or strict, which may not sound like a good thing, but in actual fact would be helping you to achieve better grades.

That being said, I can't say that private schools aren't better. At our school, we have teachers who have no idea what they're doing. I'm not exaggerating when I say I could teach better than they can, even if all I had was a few minutes beforehand to read over what I'm meant to be teaching. This kind of thing motivated me to learn myself what I needed, and I do think it's possible that you can learn a few GCSEs without a teacher, though the coursework would undoubtedly be poor and it would be difficult to learn many subjects like this.
Firstly, I don't think study leave is a good idea. I used to think it was a great idea, until it actually came to it and I just messed about, played on the computer and never actually studied at all. I'm not self-motivated lol.

Secondly, Private school teachers are simply so much better, and they also have to help you and all that if you ask, simply because it's in their job description, and if you do badly, your teacher could be out of a job. In state schools, no one cares at all.

I don't think anyone would disagree that it's easier to do well in a private school than in a state school, although you can do well in both provided you work hard. It's just easier with good teachers, a working environment with people who want to work and etc etc

Still, I wouldn't be going to the school I'm at now if it wasn't for a scholarship and bursary which happens to cover 100% of my school fees, aka, I'm going for free lol.
Reply 51
I got 10A*s and went to a state school.

I agree on the whole private school thing - its not fair when people say "its because they paid for it" etc

Although with a private school, there probably would be some increase in grades because of better schooling etc, mostly it can be accounted for by the fact that whereas in state schools you get a mix of poor / rich families, in private schools it is almost totally rich families.

Generally...(and im not meaning to be vulgar here but...) well educated / wealthy parents would bring their children up in an environment that encourages learning better etc (yes ive been reading Freakonomics!)
Stanley90
That is exactly the same with me, even stealing text books (returning them later to some mildly surprised teachers though). Now who here actually thinks that at a private/grammar school they waste whole days like this? Literally whole days where we spent lessons doing nothing apart from copying from textbooks or off the board. Copying stuff that the teachers weren't sure were on the syllabus or not.

And also to everyone who's saying that "if u wanted 2 get dem A*s m8 u cud ov dun it eazily!11" shut up because 350 people in our school took the exams this year and only 7 got 5A*s or over. Now I'm sure if these people were capable of doing so well in FIVE subjects they should have done just aswell in the others. But no, I know for a fact that 3 of them got at least 1 C. Why? because the teacher teaching that subject gave them no clue as to what they were doing. I mean I know from personal experience that from some subjects i was able to suss out some info as to what exactly we had to cover and did the rest from there but these people did not get any help whatsoever. WOULD THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN A PRIVATE SCHOOL?

Also during the year, half our class got suspended for 3 days cos some smart guys decided to play basketball in one of our lessons when no teacher showed up. They smashed 2 lights in and we all got in trouble for it.. would that have happened at your school? 3 days is quite a lot of time and the suspension goes on your permanent record. I highly doubt it. So don't try telling me that I could have got 11 A*s if I wanted to.

Are you dumb or just trying to provoke a reaction? All of the above has happened at my school, and more. True, our pass rate is higher, but only because the parents are snobby and complain about how much money they're spending, and it's a single-sex school so there's no girls to distract people; the teaching may be generally better, but that doesn't mean it's always better (due to various teachers leaving in the middle of years, being depressed, getting pregnant, having divorces and not turning up to lessons, I might as well not have had a French teacher in the last couple of years), and it certainly doesn't mean our class is well behaved (...we refused to turn up to this same teacher's lessons half the time, and no one knew because our form teacher didn't turn up to register us, so we threw chairs around the room at each other; I swear someone got hospitalised). Please don't be quite so arrogant as to think that just because staff and parents are snobby, things are any different among the pupils or quality of teaching.

Oh, incidentally; our money gets spent on new computer suites (which no one on the staff knows how to use, so we're not allowed in them), signposts (yes, telling us how to get around our own school!), and so on... not on actually paying the teachers more, I know for a fact they don't get paid more.
Reply 53
I think it all depends on who you are, not what sort of school you go to. I went to your bogstandard secondary school and got 8 A*s and 2 As - I think if I had gone to a private school the pressure might have put me off. As it was, the teachers at my school treated us as if we would be lucky to pass and that made me want to work harder. A lot of the work I did at home instead. I think whatever you put into your work is what you get out of it.

Having said that, there were a couple of teachers I absolutely hated so did nothing. I got a C in IT because I didn't understand the subject and the teacher was a total idiot - didn't help us on coursework so I got a D in that and an A in the exam. However, I could have got help from somewhere else but I didn't bother, so it is partly my fault.
Reply 54
I attented a pretty average state school (it's massive though, so you can't expect it to rank highly in the league tables) and i got 9 A*'s, 2 A's and a B. :smile:
Reply 55
My school is under 'special measures' and I somehow managed to get 10 A*'s, it still hasn't sunk in.
Well i went to a state school (not a very good one either, bad reputation but had improved dramatically year by year by the time I arrived in year 7 - its actually quite good now) and I have 8 A*'s and 1 B.

Just shows you that being in a private school doesnt mean you do better. The reason private schools come out with better average grades is:

* Most (all?) require an exam to get in. Its usually very easy, but it keeps out the idiots who don't want to learn at all which later end up dragging down the averages of state schools.

* Not to be stereotypical, but parents who send there children to private school in general all hold higer hopes for there children. So they are more pushing, and so the child comes out better off. Not to say parents of children in state schools don't want the best, because 100% of them do, its just diluted by a minority - this is really hard to explain so I'll stop now, lol.

* Private schools usually have a higher standard of teaching in general - and that means everything.

If you are comitted to learning it doesnt matter either way, you will get your grades. Its just that those who arent seep through into the state system - making it look much worse than it is.
adamscybot
* Most (all?) require an exam to get in. Its usually very easy, but it keeps out the idiots who don't want to learn at all which later end up dragging down the averages of state schools.

* Not to be stereotypical, but parents who send there children to private school in general all hold higer hopes for there children. So they are more pushing, and so the child comes out better off. Not to say parents of children in state schools don't want the best, because 100% of them do, its just diluted by a minority - this is really hard to explain so I'll stop now, lol.

* Private schools usually have a higher standard of teaching in general - and that means everything.

And again, I could dispute all of this. I took an exam to get in, though I was 7 at the time and it was piss easy even for a 7-year-old. My parents have never pushed me academically whatsoever. And higher standard of teaching in general doesn't mean all the teachers are better - see my previous post.

(Not that I'm picking on you, of course, I just think the OP needs bringing down to earth slightly and showing that private schools aren't some kind of holy grail of education, and they can be just as crap as any other school.)
adamscybot

* Most (all?) require an exam to get in. Its usually very easy, but it keeps out the idiots who don't want to learn at all which later end up dragging down the averages of state schools.


In my GCSE year there were still loads of people who obviously didn't want to learn and kept messing about or seriously disrupting the class. I don't think this was any different to the state school I used to attend. Sure the quality of teaching is better, people are generally more intelligent, but there are always the idiots that don't want to learn.
Reply 59
i went to a below average public school and got 6 A*'s, 1 A and 1 B. this despite the awful teaching and my brother being in hospital for six months.

in year 10 for english our teacher had cancer thus we had several supply teachers in 6 months!! Because of this our class only completed 1 coursework!! then in year 11 our english teacher was suspended!!! when we got a new teacher she couldnt teach us anything from the syllabus because we had to catch up on our coursework!! so from around November all the way up to about April we were doing the 5 remaining courseworks!!!. after the courseworks were completed we had to do our speaking and listening tests!! when we were ready to be taught what would actually come up in the exam there was 3 and a half weeks left till exams started!! obviously we couldnt be taught everything! depite this i got a A* in English Lang and a A in lit.

As for geography, i self taught everything!!! And i mean EVERYTHING!! i spent a few weeks on the coursework and got 29/30. I self taught tectonics,map work, glaciers, coasts, settlement, industry and managing resourses in four weeks!! in the end i got a A*, to my complete surprise.

Maths!!! we had probably the worst teacher in the school (after the geography teacher). but i would blame myself for getting a B in maths because i gave up when i should of done what i did in geography and that was to do everything at home. however, as my brother was in hospital for 6 months this wasnt possible..

i also self taught most of double science because the class was like a zoo!! however, i did get a lot of help from one of my science teachers after school..

R.E and history were the only subjects where i was taught by very good teachers who could control a class and were willing to give extra help after school.

bearing in my mind i go to a average school where the pass rate this year was only 41% and my brother being in hospital i think i did quite well.. i'm just glad its all over now!!

now i think a private school isn't as bad as this? however, i would agree that it is entirely down to the individual, i worked my socks off with the time i had and recieved good grades..

(v.sorry about the rant)

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