Kings College Guildford Parents

The table above shows Kings GCSE results including maths & English.

Any difference between results including and excluding maths & English should normally be small, in the region of 10-15%, and the smaller the difference the better.

Kings prefer to show their results without maths and English, which last year was 73% A*-C, a 41% difference. They do not show the inclusive results anywhere on their website (as of 22nd April 2008).

So why the difference and does it matter?

The boost in results is obtained from vocational qualifications, BTEC and GNVQ, which Kings count as equivalent to up to 4 GCSEs for a single qualification. A child can obtain a science GNVQ and only needs one GCSE at C or better (usually humanities or RE) to be reckoned as having 5 GCSE passes at A*-C.

Does it matter? This depends on what your child wants to do next. In our experience most further educational establishments don’t credit vocational qualifications with such a high GCSE equivalence, allowing a maximum 2 for Science GNVQ for example. It is therefore critical to have a precise understanding of what entry requirements are required for the next stage in your child’s education. We have found it is vitally important to check with the intended further education institution rather than just take Kings’ word for it and we strongly advise you do this before making year 9 choices.

Employers will have their own criteria and it might be worth calling around a few potential employers to see what they are currently expecting from employment candidates.

Kings are now offering OCR National in IT, another vocational qualification. This is an “exam-free alternative to GCSEs” and little is known about them as they’re new. How well yet another new qualification is recognized by employers or accepted by FE institutions remains to be seen and we wish those early adopters good luck. In our opinion it seems rather strange to be turning to a qualification which is entirely course-work based in the light of intense publicity surrounding the intention to greatly reduce or eliminate coursework from GCSEs.

GCSE RESULTS ALL GUILDFORD STATE SCHOOLS

All results are percentage 5+ A*-C including Maths and English as above. (Source Dfes attainment tables)

Year	George Abbot	Guildford County	St. Peter's	Kings College	Christ College
2003	60%	61%	55%	22%	not applicable
2004	66%	63%	56%	12%	25
2005	64%	66%	55%	28%	23%
2006	65%	55%	55%	35%	17%
2007	70%	68%	66%	34%	25%
2008	75%	64%	73%	37%	30%

GCSE RESULTS KINGS COLLEGE - SUBJECT BY SUBJECT