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 [...]
In recent days there has been some discussion about the way grades in current GCSEs will be scored alongside reformed GCSEs when calculating Progress 8 in 2017 and 2018. In 2016, when Progress 8 will be fully introduced into Performance Tables, GCSE grades A*-G will be converted into points on the 1-8 scale. By 2019, [...]
Today Policy Exchange have published a lengthy report ‘A Rising Tide’ claiming competitive benefits of free schools. The premise is that neighbouring schools have improved their results due to the threat of loss of pupils to a new free school. It is certainly possible that this might have happened. Any headteacher at an undersubscribed school [...]
We have an accountability system that has encouraged schools to check that children are making a certain number of sub-levels of progress each year. This is the basis on which headteachers monitor (and now pay) teachers and on which Ofsted judges schools. Yet there is little hard science underpinning the system in use: take a [...]
Attainment 8 and Progress 8, the new Key Stage Four school accountability measures due to be introduced by Government in 2016, will undoubtedly make a difference to how schools enter their pupils for qualifications. They are reminiscent of the old 'best eight or capped' and 'contextual value added' measures in that they judge a school [...]
It's not uncommon to hear schools express a view that the attainment of their intake is systematically over estimated or 'inflated' in some way. Schools are not accusing another of cheating; simply that high stakes accountability pushes teachers to ensure children achieve the best result possible. And where a feeder school outperforms expectations for an [...]
