Don’t try to forecast Progress 8!

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 [...]

By |2017-03-03T09:50:15+00:0024th February 2016|School accountability|

Floors, tables and coasters: Shifting the education furniture in England’s secondary schools

Since our launch eight months ago, Education Datalab has completed research on school admissions and selection, teacher careers, pupil premium gaps and individual pupil attainment trajectories. But we have written more about secondary school accountability than any other topic. This is, perhaps, not surprising, given the enormous changes in the qualification and accountability regimes currently [...]

By |2017-03-03T09:48:12+00:0010th November 2015|Exams and assessment, Reports, School accountability|

Opting into 2015 Progress 8 would have been an easier route to avoid floor standards for many secondary schools

Secondary school accountability is changing and by 2016 schools will be primarily judged by their Progress 8 score, rather than the proportion of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at A*-C, incl. English and maths. Progress 8 isn’t perfect (no rank order of schools serving different communities can be), but this is indeed progress. The [...]

By |2017-03-03T09:46:52+00:009th August 2015|School accountability|

Departmental heads in the sand: Why your department is performing worse than you think

How’s your driving? Below average, pretty normal, or better than most? Research suggests that the majority of our readers have just answered ‘better than most’. They are surely wrong. Only half of drivers can be better than the median. The other half are, by definition, below it. This is an example of what psychologists call [...]

By |2017-03-03T09:46:45+00:0030th July 2015|School accountability, Teachers|
Go to Top