So you’ll get your GCSE results on Thursday. They’ll show that you’ve done really well. Have you decided what you’re going to do next? Has your school got a sixth form? Are your grades good enough? Are there any Colleges nearby? What do they offer? Now imagine you come and live with me in South [...]
Over the weekend the Daily Mail reported on plans to open the first new Grammar School in 50 years. The arguments for and against Grammar Schools as agents of educational improvement and social mobility will doubtless be rehearsed with even greater vigour in the coming months. In this blog we look at whether private tuition [...]
From time to time the use of significance tests for school performance indicators in RAISEonline is called into question. If school cohorts are not independent, random samples then surely we should not be using significance tests that assume independent, random samples right? Well, yes and no. If we want to make causal statements (i.e. that [...]
The Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, will likely talk this week about the new requirement for schools to teach all Key Stage 4 pupils the English Baccalaureate subjects of English, maths, science, history or geography and a language. This follows a speech last week by Nick Gibb and is arguably the most significant part [...]
Eligibility for free school meals (FSM) has traditionally been used in education research as a proxy for poverty. It has its limitations of course: not all those who may be eligible choose to claim for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, differences in attainment between those known to be eligible and other pupils are stark. As [...]
In a previous blog, we noted that Grammar schools tended to achieve above average Progress 8 scores based on 2014 data. At first glance, this is a worrying finding. Progress 8 is supposed to offer a fairer basis for comparing schools than measures of raw attainment. Moreover, this effect is not limited to Grammar Schools. [...]
There are infinite different ways to judge whether pupils at a school achieved more or less than they might have if placed at another school chosen at random. Tom Sherrington has chosen to criticise one – Progress 8 – in his blog and propose another – a comparison of the distribution of attainment by intake and [...]
With attainment in London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country, the focus of City Challenge initiatives, apparently no longer giving cause for concern, the spotlight has shifted to coastal towns and rural areas. The 2014 report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, for example, drew attention to the problems faced by schools in such areas in recruiting teachers. [...]
The changes made by the coalition government to secondary school accountability, such as the EBACC, the Wolf Review and Progress 8, have tended to be met by concern that 'creative' subjects will become marginalised as a result of schools placing greater emphasis on 'academic' subjects. In recent weeks, for example, the TES questioned whether creative [...]
