This is part four in a series of blogposts exploring long-term disadvantage. Other posts in the series can be found here. At the start of the summer we showed that there are substantial differences in the attainment and progress of pupils who have been disadvantaged at some stage. The main findings of these earlier posts were [...]
A version of this blogpost also appears on the Sutton Trust website. When the PISA results are released, almost everyone is fixated upon the average scores children have achieved in reading, science and mathematics, and our latest position in the “international rankings”. However, a lot of other information is captured within the study, some of [...]
Following the coverage of St. Olave’s school in The Guardian, I revisited the analysis I did on Year 12 retention to examine the prevalence of drop-out from selective schools. I look at a subset of pupils: those who made it to the end of Year 12 and were entered for at least three AS-Levels in [...]
1. The percentage of pupils achieving the higher standard has increased We already knew that the percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths increased from 53% last year to 61% this year. And today’s release of provisional Key Stage 2 data shows that the percentage reaching the higher standard increased [...]
[This post was updated at 18.15 on 24th August 2017 to amend 2016 figures for maths] One bit of good news from this year’s GCSE results is that the percentages of 17-year-olds in England achieving A*-C grades in English have gone up. However, working out by just how much they have improved is made slightly [...]
In England, the government has been trying to push schools into raising entries in the so-called EBacc subjects through its accountability metrics: the percentage entering and achieving the EBacc, and Progress 8. This is one reason why subject entries have been changing so much in recent years. However, another reason why they are changing is [...]
We have the first set of results under the new 9-1 GCSEs Maths, English language and English literature form the first wave of GCSEs to be reformed in England, with 9-1 numerical grades awarded instead of letters. In the new, ‘fat’ maths GCSE – so-called, because of the extra content that’s been added to it [...]
We looked at some of the main A-Level results trends this morning, and separately we have looked at how results changed in subjects that have been reformed (in brief: attainment fell slightly). But there are a couple of other interesting trends in grade distributions to be drawn out. Some specific subjects are seeing quite large [...]
A massive 59% of A-Level exams sat in England this year were in reformed subjects which follow the new, linear model of sitting one set of exams at the end of the two-year course. Overall, and perhaps surprisingly, A-Level entries by 18-year-olds in reformed subjects increased by 2.3% in England. This compares to 0.7% in [...]
