Making sense of school performance data in 2025
This year's published secondary school performance data shows why Progress 8 (or something like it) is needed, despite its flaws
Some things you might not know about our schools – a birthday special
As we celebrate our tenth birthday, we look back at some of the issues we were talking about when Datalab launched, and reflect on some of the other big issues in education today.
Splitting the disadvantage gap within and between schools, part one
Around 8% of the gap in Progress 8 scores between disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged pupils in 2024 appears to be attributable to the way in which pupils from both groups are shared out between schools
Some more things we’ve learned about the 2024 GCSE results
We present some very early Key Stage 4 headline statistics, including Attainment 8, collected from 1,800 secondary schools - UPDATED 13/9/24
Contextualising Progress 8
As part of our work on a school quality index, we set our approach to measuring academic outcomes using a contextualised Progress 8 measure
Secondary school and MAT performance tables 2023: What have we learned?
We pick out some highlights from this year's performance tables
Looking into Labour’s proposed changes to Progress 8
Labour have announced plans to include a "slot" for a creative or vocational subject in Progress 8. We investigate the possible impact.
Are Ofsted inspections helpful for choosing secondary schools?
Ofsted argue that inspections support school choice. But can this be true if some schools haven't been inspected for several years?
Attainment 8 in 2022
This year, Attainment 8 will (once again) be calculated differently to previous years. We look at this impact this might have.