I’m not normally inclined to say “I told you so” but, in this case, it might be justified. Back in 2015, when the Department for Education announced the scores for old style GCSEs in 2017, Dave Thomson and I did some calculations to look at 'what if' the DfE 2016 and 2017 scoring systems were applied [...]
Last year at the Schools NorthEast Annual Summit I was delighted to talk to primary teachers and learn how they had become a high-performing region. Today I had less happy conversation with their secondary colleagues about why they are falling behind at GCSE. As the chart below shows, the North East has always scored poorly [...]
The EBacc continues to be ignored There was a slight fall in the percentage of pupils entered for all five subjects making up the English Baccalaureate (EBacc). Even so, the percentage entered for the science and humanities components actually increased. The fall in the headline EBacc entry rate was entirely due to a drop in [...]
The 2017 GCSE English and maths papers were graded on the new nine-point scale (9-1) rather than the old eight-point scale (A*-G). The content and structure of the English and maths GCSEs have also been reformed at the same time. The rest of the GCSEs will follow suit over the next few years. The new [...]
The first free schools opened in September 2011, and as most secondary free schools opened with only a single year group of pupils we’re only now starting to get results for many of these schools. A total of 49 mainstream free schools have results in this morning’s release of provisional 2017 Key Stage 4 results. [...]
Schools’ provisional Progress 8 scores for 2017 were published today, having already been released to schools over a fortnight ago. This would have been a chastening experience for those falling below the floor standard of -0.5. On the surface, there are more of them this year than last. But is this fair? Changes to GCSE [...]
Latest DfE statistics show that there were almost 16,000 pupils on-roll at pupil referral units, and another 22,000 in other local authority alternative provision in January 2017 [XLS, table 1b]. These are pupils whose education is paid for by the state but who do not have places at state-funded mainstream or special schools. The different [...]
This is a joint blogpost from Education Datalab and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL). This post was updated on 16 October 2017. The cut-off date for inclusion in this analysis was originally stated as 30 June 2017, based on an earlier draft of this analysis, when it should have been given as 31 [...]
