This year, 81 schools are using the new Proof of Progress Tests (PoP tests) from FFT to assess writing and conceptual understanding in maths at the start and end of Year 7. The tests are designed to be sensitive to learning, but resistant to practice effects. In other words, we would only expect pupils [...]
Last year we said we thought we needed about 2,500 extra language teachers to deliver the manifesto commitment to teach the EBacc to all students at KS4. In 2015, 50% of students in state mainstream schools were entered for a GCSE language, so achieving universal provision is an enormous undertaking. Some of these students can [...]
Last year we reported on how schools serving more affluent pupil communities are likely to achieve much better Progress 8 scores. It isn’t immediately obvious that this should be so, since the Attainment 8 GCSE score for a child is always compared to other children who scored exactly the same Key Stage Two (KS2) fine [...]
In our visits to secondary schools this year we are seeing a huge variety of target setting strategies. It is completely understandable that headteachers want a framework for knowing whether year groups are on-track to do well. This isn’t easy with re-scaled GCSEs dribbling on-stream and a hard accountability target – Progress 8 – that [...]
Answer? Law and astronomy, although there are very few entries each year. The much bigger issue is that GCSEs in modern foreign languages are graded more severely than other subjects. Just before Christmas, Ofqual published a set of very interesting working papers about inter-subject comparability and subject difficulty in GCSEs and A levels. The conclusion [...]
In the past few weeks both CentreForum (in conjunction with our very own Mike Treadaway) and the Social Market Foundation have published reports on education. Both reports discuss gaps in attainment between pupils from different family backgrounds, drawing attention to the importance of education for social mobility. Education is usually seen as an important factor in [...]
At the launch of the Social Market Foundation’s Commission into Educational Inequalities a couple of weeks ago, the observation that regional inequalities had widened since the 1970s garnered a great deal of interest. The analysis released by the Commission was just a starting point and I, alongside the other Commissioners (Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, [...]
Secondary school performance tables report the attainment of the pupils who are present at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4), some of whom have completed their entire secondary education at the school and others who have joined subsequently. But should the school be judged as equally responsible for the attainment of the child who [...]
David Bowie sang “And every time I thought I'd got it made, It seemed the taste was not so sweet” (Changes, 1971). He could have been thinking about the changes which will happen over the next few years in government accountability systems – scaled scores at Key Stage 2 in 2016 and reformed GCSEs from [...]
