Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I hope other Old Blues will join me in congratulating this year’s Grecians on an impressive set of A level results. And of course to Simon Reid on a successful first year in the post as Headmaster.

Christ’s Hospital pupils and their teachers are celebrating another year of excellent A level results. A highly impressive 53% of all Pre-U and A Level grades achieved were equivalent to either an A* or A, with 75% A*-B. Of all the grades achieved 16% were A*s, with 33 pupils out of the cohort of 117 achieving a minimum of one A*. The average UCAS points achieved by a pupil was 130 which equates to ABB.

I would echo the congratulations to this year’s Grecians - well done I’m sure!

J

jtaylor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:42 pm I would echo the congratulations to this year’s Grecians - well done I’m sure!

J

.... and me to those pupils, who must have gone into those exams knowing full well that the smelly stuff was going to hit a very large fan many many times over, and may well have taken unwarranted stick from friends at home in the form of ribald banter.

Out of those successes, 40% are going to prestigious universities including Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial College, KCL, LSE, Oxford, and UCL.

I wonder whose definition of “prestigious” they’re using, and how those who’ve got places at the other Uni’s feel?!

https://www.christs-hospital.org.uk/sch ... al-pupils/

I also wonder what the career guidance says about apprenticeships and non-university choices post-CH? I know in my day it was a massive focus and assumption that you’d go to Uni if you could - and it didn’t suit many, or they did courses which didn’t lead to a career....and ended up with debt, even more so today?

J.R. wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:47 pm

jtaylor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:42 pm I would echo the congratulations to this year’s Grecians - well done I’m sure!

J

.... and me to those pupils, who must have gone into those exams knowing full well that the smelly stuff was going to hit a very large fan many many times over, and may well have taken unwarranted stick from friends at home in the form of ribald banter.

I doubt if it would cross their mind. None of the current pupils would have known these teachers and as an 18 year old, this would have been ancient history to many of th. as for friends at home giving them stick, again, I doubt it - most coverage has been on local news and in newspapers, both forms of media hardly even touched by teenagers today.

I’d be very surprised if nothing’s been said to pupils and parents? Taking “the good name of Christ’s Hospital” with you wherever you go feels MUCH more challenging now.
Friends of mine, with no CH link at all except that they know I went there, have commented to me - so it’s fairly public and widely known about, and I’d be surprised if they were oblivious.
To be honest, it’s be appalling if they’re DIDN’T know??

Julian, what I mean is that at home, non ch contemporaries of current pupils probably won’t tease current pupils.
As for current pupils / recent leavers - it certainly doesn’t seem to be a huge topic of concern etc from listening into conversations at Beating retreat etc. Doesn’t mean they aren’t of course...

Fortunately, I think seriousness of this means that even with teenagers it’s not a topic of humour/teasing...

Or to put it another way, when my wife and I were having a weekend drink in our local with an afore-mentioned on here OB, a knowledgeable person, outside our circle leaned across to ask what we were talking about.

When the name of CH was mentioned, his response was, "Oh, that school in Horsham where pupils wear funny uniforms. The school that has all those pervy teachers appearing in court !!"

So, I wouldn't bet on 'outsiders' NOT knowing what is going on.

jtaylor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:47 pm I also wonder what the career guidance says about apprenticeships and non-university choices post-CH? I know in my day it was a massive focus and assumption that you’d go to Uni if you could - and it didn’t suit many, or they did courses which didn’t lead to a career....and ended up with debt, even more so today?

Julian; I think you are being a bit (or too) polite here. AFAIR there was almost* nothing about universities and certainly nothing whatsoever about anything else such as courses. The ONLY thing mentioned was that if you joined the Honourable Artillery Company then, in the event of war, you would automatically get a commission - or so they claimed. Apart from that, come the day, you were simply pushed onto the train and forgotten except for the periodic demands for money.

* I use the word "almost" because I certainly heard nothing except that OBs had got x scholarships to Oxbridge so someone somewhere must have let slip some information.

In my day if you failed Latin O level that totally ruled out Oxbridge. As far as I remember the school Science Dept were very proactive in getting me a conditional place at London University, and an unconditional place at Liverpool. Since I underachieved massively in my S levels, getting worse grades than at A level, Liverpool it was.
Unfortunately the Electronics Degree at Liverpool University was a farce, with the first year totally devoted to thermodynamics and Steam Technology - which James Watt might have devised So I went elsewhere - to do Cinematography at The Polytechnic Regent Street, living in London for the first year with no grant whatsoever, but just £100 to last the year which my father got from the Benevolent Society of Blues - those were the days, I managed (sort of)!

As to the 117 exam successes this year at CH, I am reminded of a story:
One year I remember Uncle Kirby and another master were awarded the MBE. The morning of the announcement Kirby entered the classroom of the other master (during class) and handed a small piece of paper to the teacher. The master read the note, suppressed a chuckle, and ripped the paper into small pieces and threw it into his waste bin.
After the class a devious child waited until the master had left, then retrieved the fragments of paper and spent his next break re-assembling all the bits.
On it Uncle Kirby had written: MBE = My Bl**dy Efforts. OBE = Other B*ggers Efforts. Which was a commiseration for not getting the OBE.

So congratulations to the hard-working 117 with their 'My Bl**dy Efforts', definitely not confusing them with the 'Other B*ggers Efforts'

Impressive results indeed – all concerned are to be warmly congratulated.

But perhaps these results would be even more impressive if someone could give comparable results for comparable schools.

ZeroDeConduite wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:52 pm In my day if you failed Latin O level that totally ruled out Oxbridge. ...

For Oxbridge, O level Latin or Greek was compulsory. GCEs came in 1952 but the first year there was a levelling-down Labour rule that they could not be taken until one was 16, and I wasn't. Flecker had replaced Latin with Greek until the chosen became Classical Deps and did both. So in 1952, as CH was under 16, I couldn't do a Greek O level. There was an alternative set by Oxbridge, 'Reponsions', so was put in for that as a banker for Oxbridge in case I ploughed my naval entrance. But I ploughed Responsions. So for 1952-3, as a Probationary Maths Grecian, I was separately coached by Buck for Greek O level and duly passed it - I heard later, scraped it - not, in the end that it mattered.

But perhaps these results would be even more impressive if someone could give comparable results for comparable schools.

Local schools A*/B:

Brighton College 99%
Christ’s Hospital 75%
Collyers Horsham 59%

Last year CH achieved 43% and came 93rd in the national table using this metric. So an improvement.

To state the obvious - There's more to education than exam results.

Exactly - given the school remit it would be wrong to place too much stock on exam results as the school is not there to be the best exam school in the country it is there to offer people opportunities they would otherwise not be afforded. For some the alternative in the absence of CH could be scrapping through GCSE's in a sink school and then getting a job local to their home, CH broadening those horizons and them even getting an ALevel education is a massive advantage but not measurable in a league table of results