One of the most interesting figures in Tuesday’s statistical first release on pupils in state-funded schools was the fall in the percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals to the lowest level recorded since the introduction of the School Census in January 2002. Of course, it's well-known that free school meal eligibility is an [...]
Earlier today at the Festival of Education I hosted a panel session with Jack Marwood and Michael Tidd that asked whether high stakes primary school tests can ever serve the interests of children. Michael Tidd has, through his blogs, tweets and newspaper column, publicly held the Government to account through the repeated missed deadlines on [...]
We recently published a report with the Social Market Foundation showing that schools serving more disadvantaged communities appeared to have greater difficulties in recruiting suitably qualified teachers. Ofsted contacted us to ask whether these inequalities were more or less pronounced in areas with selective secondary schooling because this has been an area of inquiry for them. [...]
At our NPD training course last month we discussed the problem of what to do when a test is not universally sat by every pupil in every year. One good example is the Key Stage Two maths extension paper, sat by some 11 year olds in the years up to 2002 and then between 2012 and [...]
--- UPDATE: These roles have now been filled. Please visit the FFT website to see current vacancies at FFT. --- We are looking for a new member of staff to join the Education Datalab team. Statistician This role stretches across the work of Education Datalab and the rest of FFT. As part of this role [...]
This is the second in a series of posts on the education white paper. The other parts can be found here. It’s well-known that a greater share of secondary schools have become academies to date than have primaries. Coupled with the fact that there are lots more primary schools, this means that the bulk of [...]
Ofqual last week wrote to awarding organisations (AOs), asking them to justify the size, and guided learning hours, of qualifications of theirs which count in Key Stage 4 performance tables. The regulator may wish to go further and consider also how grades in non-GCSE qualifications relate to GCSE grades. GCSE grades awarded by different AOs [...]
Today the Social Market Foundation’s Commission on Inequality in Education publishes a new piece of work that we have co-authored, arguing that inequalities in access to high quality teachers across schools may contribute to social inequalities in educational outcomes. Those who work in education often hear anecdotes suggesting that schools serving more disadvantaged communities have [...]
We were commissioned by Ofqual to consider the likely impact on different types of schools of different approaches to the award of grade 9 in new GCSEs. Three approaches to the award of grade 9 were modelled: 20% approach: the grade 9 boundary in each subject is set so that the top 20% of students [...]
