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 [...]
This Government has invested enormous amounts of money and political capital in closing the attainment gap between children from low-income families, and everyone else. They give schools a pupil premium for children eligible for free school meals (and some other vulnerable groups) now worth £1300 for primary pupils and £935 for secondary pupils. They gave [...]
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 [...]
This evening we launch Education Datalab with a report ‘Seven things you might not know about our schools'. Rich data on our schools has been available for over a decade now but, as we hope this report shows, there is still much we can learn. Every piece of analysis we show in this report is [...]
