Multi-academy trust league tables 2017: What can we learn from the data? Including a lesson on why we shouldn’t take everything at face value

Along with Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 league tables, the Department for Education has this morning published multi-academy trust league tables – the second year it has published these in full. This analysis looks purely at the DfE’s Key Stage 4 MAT league tables, focusing on those trusts with more than five secondary [...]

By |2018-09-27T17:23:18+01:0025th January 2018|School accountability, Structures|

KS4 performance tables 2017: Everything we know about coasting schools and floor standard schools

The first table in this post was updated at 17.42 on 25 January 2018 after we noticed – of all things – that percentages in the table did not add up to 100. We very much regret the error. Key Stage 4 league tables – performance tables, to use their proper name – have been published this [...]

Provisional KS4 data 2017: Has your Progress 8 score improved?

I’m not normally inclined to say “I told you so” but, in this case, it might be justified. Back in 2015, when the Department for Education announced the scores for old style GCSEs in 2017, Dave Thomson and I did some calculations to look at 'what if' the DfE 2016 and 2017 scoring systems were applied [...]

Provisional KS4 data 2017: North East secondary schools fall further behind the rest of the country

Last year at the Schools NorthEast Annual Summit I was delighted to talk to primary teachers and learn how they had become a high-performing region. Today I had less happy conversation with their secondary colleagues about why they are falling behind at GCSE. As the chart below shows, the North East has always scored poorly [...]

By |2017-10-18T18:06:46+01:0012th October 2017|Exams and assessment, School accountability|

Provisional KS4 data 2017: A round-up

The EBacc continues to be ignored There was a slight fall in the percentage of pupils entered for all five subjects making up the English Baccalaureate (EBacc). Even so, the percentage entered for the science and humanities components actually increased. The fall in the headline EBacc entry rate was entirely due to a drop in [...]

Provisional KS4 data 2017: How are free schools faring?

The first free schools opened in September 2011, and as most secondary free schools opened with only a single year group of pupils we’re only now starting to get results for many of these schools. A total of 49 mainstream free schools have results in this morning’s release of provisional 2017 Key Stage 4 results. [...]

Provisional KS4 data 2017: Raising the floor

Schools’ provisional Progress 8 scores for 2017 were published today, having already been released to schools over a fortnight ago. This would have been a chastening experience for those falling below the floor standard of -0.5. On the surface, there are more of them this year than last. But is this fair? Changes to GCSE [...]

Go to Top