From time to time the use of significance tests for school performance indicators in RAISEonline is called into question. If school cohorts are not independent, random samples then surely we should not be using significance tests that assume independent, random samples right? Well, yes and no. If we want to make causal statements (i.e. that [...]
Ofsted judgements. Floor standards. Coasting schools. Schools are going to be subject to multiple accountability judgements at once. This might be helpful, ensuring no school falls between the cracks. Or it might undermine the credibility of the accountability regime by signalling confusing messages to schools. The interplay between Ofsted judgements and coasting schools is interesting. [...]
Late last night the Department for Education published the draft Bill with details of how ‘coasting’ will be defined. Three years’ data, from 2013/14 to 2015/16, will be used. The same indicators used to define floor standards will be used but the bar will be raised. The position of the bar for 2016 is not [...]
Want to help steer the Education and Adoption Bill through Parliament? Fancy having a go at defining a coasting school? Look no further than our handy ‘Choose your own coasting secondary school’ tool, useful for Secretaries of State in need of definition. How to use the tool We give you about 3,000 secondary schools with [...]
The Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, will likely talk this week about the new requirement for schools to teach all Key Stage 4 pupils the English Baccalaureate subjects of English, maths, science, history or geography and a language. This follows a speech last week by Nick Gibb and is arguably the most significant part [...]
Our accountability systems – Ofsted and performance tables – require us to place all schools on a line from the very best to the very worst. Every few years we change how this line is drawn. Every time the line is redrawn, headteachers declare the performance metric to be unfair. There is no magical formula [...]
In a previous blog, we noted that Grammar schools tended to achieve above average Progress 8 scores based on 2014 data. At first glance, this is a worrying finding. Progress 8 is supposed to offer a fairer basis for comparing schools than measures of raw attainment. Moreover, this effect is not limited to Grammar Schools. [...]
There are infinite different ways to judge whether pupils at a school achieved more or less than they might have if placed at another school chosen at random. Tom Sherrington has chosen to criticise one – Progress 8 – in his blog and propose another – a comparison of the distribution of attainment by intake and [...]
The Wolf Review of 2011 heralded major changes to the Key Stage 4 Performance Tables this year. Much of the media coverage in the wake of their publication tended to focus on a fall in the headline percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A*-C grades (or equivalents) including English and mathematics and a rise [...]
