Secondary schools today received provisional Progress 8 data for 2016. This is a significant milestone given the importance attached to Progress 8 in the secondary school accountability framework. The rest of us will have to wait until provisional data is published in October. In the meantime DfE has published some very useful technical information that [...]
School leaders are used to dealing with change, not least when it comes to assessment data, but this year is in a league of its own. With changes to all the tests, teacher assessment, scaled scores and accountability measures, headteachers would be forgiven for despairing of any attempt to make sense of it. Even when [...]
So now we know. The new Key Stage 2 tests in reading and maths were harder than their predecessors. And there was also substantial variation in writing teacher assessment between local authorities. In this post we examine which pupils met the expected standards in 2016, and how that compares to 2015. We also look at [...]
On 13 October secondary schools will receive Progress 8 data for 2016. They will already have received so-called ‘shadow’ data for 2015, of course, but the 2016 data will be different. It will be a game changer. It will be published in Performance Tables and used to define floor standards. As we have written previously, it [...]
At a headline level, results have fallen this year A*-A results were down from 22.3 per cent of all results last year, to 21.7 per cent of all results this year. On the headline A*-C measure, results were down from 70.8 per cent to 69.5 per cent. (Figures given here and in the rest of [...]
There has been some discussion on blogs and twitter in recent days about whether schools should try calculating Progress 8 on results day. Given that it is the measure used to define the floor standard, it is quite understandable that schools will want to know as soon as possible where they lie in relation to [...]
Today, Sutton Trust published our report on the 300 secondary schools who transformed their curriculum between 2010 and 2013 in response to government policy, achieving a rise in the proportion of pupils entering the EBacc from 8% to 48%. Understanding the experiences of pupils in these schools gives us a little window on what might [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
