What has Progress 8 done for the creative subjects?
There has been a small decrease in the proportion of young people entered for one or more qualifications in creative subjects since Progress 8 was introduced in 2016. But is Progress 8 to blame?
How well do secondary schools’ intakes of pupils with EHC plans reflect the areas in which they are located?
Relatively few pupils with EHC plans attend their nearest mainstream secondary school. We examine how this varies across different types of school.
Revisiting subject difficulty at Key Stage 4
We revisit a previous blog looking at points awarded in different subjects relative to English and maths. We find little change compared to pre-pandemic times.
Can attendance data be used to identify pupils on part-time timetables?
We try to use attendance data to work out how many pupils nationally might have been on a part-time timetable at some point in the Autumn or Spring terms 2022/23
Pupils joining and leaving the state-funded school system before and after the start of the pandemic
We examine the rate at which pupils have joined or left the state-funded school system in England in recent years. These rates fell during the height of the initial waves of the pandemic.
Attendance code B: Not absent but not present at school
It is rare for pupils to be regularly educated off-site. But there are a small number of pupils who spend more time off site than at the school at which they are registered.
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?
What is persistent absence measuring (and does it need to change)?
Why looking at the number of spells of absence alongside rates of absence helps to identify those who are most likely to remain persistently absent
The relationship between Progress 8 and inspection outcomes
Both inspection outcomes and Progress 8 scores are imperfect proxies of school quality. We examine how strongly they are related.