This year’s secondary school performance tables are the first to be published based mainly on pupil progress rather than just raw attainment data and they look notably different to previous years – including the use of negative and positive scores.
The Department for Education has published a wealth of information, including school’s key stage 4 scores for Progress 8, Attainment 8, and the English Baccalaureate.
Attainment 8 is a more familiar attainment measure based on pupils’ performance across eight subjects including English and maths. This is expressed as a score out of 80, with this year’s national average being 49.9 (girls scored 52.3 and boys 47.7).
The new headline measure of Progress 8 then compares this score to the average results of pupils nationally who started secondary school with similar key stage 2 SATs scores. A pupil’s Progress 8 score is the difference between their actual Attainment 8 result and the average result of those in their prior attainment group.
Progress 8 scores will be centred around 0 as the average with most schools scoring between –1 and 1:
- A score of 0 means pupils in a school do on average about as well as pupils with similar prior attainment nationally.
- A positive score means pupils do better on average than those with similar prior attainment nationally.
- A negative score means pupils do worse on average than those with similar prior attainment nationally.
However, while welcoming the shift in focus to progress rather than raw attainment, school leaders have warned this week that the structure of the new system means that a handful of pupils can have a dramatic affect on a school’s overall score.
Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “Progress 8 is a fairer measure of school performance than the old measure of the proportion of pupils achieving at least five A* to C grades at GCSE including English and maths. It better reflects the fact that children start their secondary school education at different levels of academic ability and it aims to judge schools on the progress that all their pupils make, rather than an arbitrary measure of GCSE attainment.
“However, Progress 8 has teething problems, and must be treated with some caution. Its biggest weakness is that the score of a school is disproportionately affected by as few as one or two pupils recording anomalous results.”
Mr Trobe said that ASCL is aware of cases where Progress 8 scores have been badly affected by the fact that a very small number of vulnerable children have missed exams as a result of illnesses or other personal crises.
He added: “We are concerned that schools are being judged on circumstances outside of their control. We are pressing the government to address this flaw in the Progress 8 system as a matter of urgency.
“Our message to parents is that no system of measuring school performance is perfect. It is their judgement which is most important and they should base that judgement on the whole picture of the school’s curriculum and culture and whether it is the best fit for their child.”
This year, the Progress 8 average for all pupils in state secondary schools was –0.03. However, girls scored an average Progress 8 score of 0.11, while boys made below average progress at –0.17.
Pupil Premium remains a key priority and the new figures showed that disadvantaged pupils scored an average of –0.38.
Each year the government will set a Progress 8 benchmark below which a school will be considered to be “failing”. This year, this benchmark is –0.5 – below which there are 282 schools (under the old five A* to C system last year, 312 schools were considered to be failing).
On the EBacc, the data shows that 39.6 per cent of pupils were entered in 2016 for at least five GCSEs that would meet the EBacc requirements – up one per cent on 2015. The number achieving A* to C grades in these subjects rose from 23.9 to 24.5 per cent.
Teachers’ unions have also urged caution in interpreting and using the new figures. Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “Parents and schools should treat these performance measures with caution. The Attainment 8, Progress 8 and EBacc headline measures only paint part of the picture of how schools are performing.
“For years GCSE grades have been predicted on the basis of the SATs English and maths tests, despite this applying across all subjects, for example in art, history, geography and MFL. These same data are now being used for the Progress 8 measure. The SATs have been problematic for some years and are not a reliable source on which to base judgements on the performance of secondary schools.
Chris Keates, general secretary at the NASUWT, added: “It is incredibly important to treat progress-based accountability data with an appropriate degree of caution and not to use it to make sweeping crude judgements about the effectiveness of schools.
“Progress 8 provides just one perspective on the quality of work that schools undertake with their pupils and there are many other indicators that have to be taken into account to get a rounded and accurate picture.
“Accountability systems based on over-simplistic interpretations of pupil performance are not only crude, but also lead to unintended consequences that may be damaging to pupils’ education.”