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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
