However, as a former assistant headteacher in charge of data, it was the consultation on secondary school accountability measures announced, that really caught my eye. The consultation proposes four major changes to the secondary school accountability measures.
Changes to Progress 8
Two of the changes relate to the Progress 8 measure.
Replacing the three EBacc and three open bucket slots in the current progress 8 measure with two science slots, two 'breadth' slots and two 'choice' slots
This is probably the biggest change announced in the consultation, as we see the final draft of what was originally proposed in the government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review in November, with some tweaks and further information.
Ostensibly this is to attempt to reverse the 'decline' in the take up of arts subjects since the introduction of the EBacc back in 2010. However, opinion remains divided as to how big an impact the EBacc has actually had on arts take ups.
As can be seen in these graphs (which I generated with the help of Google's Gemini AI tool), the only arts subject to experience a significant decline in the last 15 years is design and technology (DT). However the rate of this decline is similar in Wales (which does not have the EBacc performance measure) when compared to England. This is much more likely to be attributable to the increased costs to schools in offering DT at GCSE, and the significant fall in the recruitment of design and technology teachers meaning that some schools will simply not be able to recruit DT teachers to be able to offer DT as a GCSE option. This is not to mention the changes to the design and technology GCSE, the removal of the Food GCSE from the DT umbrella and the rise in vocational qualifications that mirror different aspects of the design and technology GCSE, which will all have some impact on the reported take up of design and technology at GCSE. The other subjects in these graphs all show similar rates of decline across England, Scotland and Wales (with the exception of drama in Scotland), suggesting wider societal factors are at play here than simply the introduction of the EBacc.
Even with the removal of the EBacc performance measure, it is hard to see how this can do much to improve the take up of arts subjects. I am sure there are some schools out there that will force pupils down an EBacc pathway simply to try and boost their EBacc take up figures, however I would suggest the majority of schools will be ensuring as many pupils as possible take an EBacc option because either:
- They believe in the messaging from the previous government that these qualifications are truly the gateway qualifications to further academic study, or
- Their curriculum and staffing is set up for offering more of the EBacc subjects through KS3 and KS4 than arts subjects.
This second point is not to be underestimated. To offer more creative subjects at GCSE, or to increase take up, schools need to spend more time at KS3 preparing pupils for GCSEs in these subjects. This means diverting time at KS3 away from other subjects (most likely the humanities), towards these subjects. This requires more teachers, more specialist equipment or larger spaces (in the case of drama and dance), that many schools will not be set up to provide. Smaller schools especially would struggle with the financial burden of these subjects compared to predominantly classroom based subjects such as history, geography and RS if take up of the arts were to significantly increase, and would almost certainly have to reduce their humanities staffing. These smaller schools are already likely to be reviewing their staffing following the government pledge during the aforementioned curriculum and assessment review to ensure that the three separate science GCSEs are available in every school - if these schools have to find extra money for science teachers and science equipment they are even more unlikely to be able to fund increases in arts teaching and equipment.
Simplified banding processes
Instead of the current banding process, which sees schools grouped into five groups based on the confidence intervals of their P8 figure, the government is proposing to simply chop schools into five quintiles based on their P8 figure, so the bottom 20% would be 'well below average', the next 20% labelled 'below average' and so on. This compares to the distribution of scores in 2024 shown below (note the image was actually produced in 2019, but the figures remained the same until 2024).
The government say this is to address issues created by confidence intervals, such as smaller schools having such wide confidence intervals that they can never be anything other than average.
Whilst I appreciate that the current system is more convoluted, I can't help but feel that the replacement is too simplistic. The government have said that they will mitigate against the loss of confidence intervals by publishing three years worth of data alongside each other, as well as cohort sizes and an explanation about the inherent uncertainty due to cohort sizes, however it still feels off to me to have all of these categories be the same size. The figures above suggest an almost normal distribution of schools - in a normal distribution approximately 38% of the data is within 0.5 standard deviations of the mean, with about 15% then between 0.5 and 1 standard deviations on each side, and a similar proportion above or below 1 standard deviation from the mean.
Whether arrived at using the current methodology or using percentile (as opposed to quintile) measures, this distribution of schools feels right to me.
New measures introduced
Alongside these changes, the government is suggesting introducing two new measures for school accountability.
New measure for those that didn't meet the expected standard
It has long been recognised that a small number of pupils performing poorly can drastically alter a school's P8 score. The previous government went some way to address this by introducing a cap for how negative a pupil's P8 score can be, however this government is looking to go further by including a new measure of progress alongside P8 for those pupils that come to secondary school without having met the expected standard in English and maths.
The proposal is to calculate a best-fit progress score across all the subjects that a pupil sits individually - basically calculating a P3, P4, P5 etc. score and allowing the school to take the highest of these. It is hoped that this will allow schools to continue to encourage lower prior attaining pupils to attempt a broad curriculum, whilst allowing schools to highlight the progress pupils make in areas even if those pupils don't as well in other areas, or don't fill all eight of the P8 buckets.
I am sure secondary schools will welcome this move as a way of allowing them to highlight the good work that they do with struggling and disengaged learners, and I hope that schools will use this responsibly as a tool to support their planning for pupils that struggle with learning and make sensible decisions about the curriculum and assessment pathway that these pupils will follow.
New additional achievement measure for high attainers
Alongside the current measures of percentage of pupils achieving grade 5+ and grade 4+ in English and maths, there is a proposal to include a new measure for the proportion of pupils achieving grade 7+ in English and maths. The government says that this should reinforce 'the incentives for schools to provide a rich and stretching education for all children'.
It will be interesting to see how schools respond to this measure. Much of the extra support and intervention that happens for pupils at GCSE is focused on ensuring as many pupils as possible secure grade 4 or grade 5 in English and maths. Whilst this is beneficial for schools in maximising their accountability measures, it is also beneficial for pupils as these are the grades that are most typically required for pupils to follow A-Level (or other level 3) pathways post-16. Will schools have the capacity to extend their intervention to focus on pushing grade 6 pupils to grade 7 alongside this? I hope this will not lead to less pupils getting the support they need to secure their college pathways if schools decide it is easier to try and maximise the 7+ figure than the 4+ figure (if they don't have the capacity to focus on both) - as it is generally recognised that it is easier to move a pupil from a 6 to a 7 than from a 3 to a 4.
I do think this will benefit maths in particular, however. For maths it is often the case that post-16 providers don't accept pupils for A-Level maths with less than grade 7, so this could well provide an extra incentive for schools to provide that extra stretch and challenge for pupils to achieve the grades that will allow them to go on and study A-Level mathematics.
All in all, I think it is probably right to show publicly how well the top-performing pupils go on to achieve in a school. However, context must always be taken into account. Where schools are failing to convert high-prior attainers into top grades at GCSE, this needs to be highlighted and challenged. Where schools are actually taking learners that stood little chance of reaching top grades and ensuring that they do go on to secure top grades, this also needs to be recognised and celebrated. Progress 8 can help to do this, but can be complicated by other factors. In my mind, it would be useful to compare these headline attainment figures not only to the local authority and national averages, but to other schools in similar contexts. Perhaps we could have a third comparison figure that compares to schools with similar disadvantage intake; we know that disadvantage correlates strongly with outcomes (although the government is working hard to change this) and so seeing how well a school supports pupils to achieve top grades compared to other schools with similar profiles of disadvantage would allow for more schools to be highlighted and recognised for the excellent work that they do in more difficult circumstances.
The missing piece of the puzzle here is how these new measures will feature in Ofsted's process for holding schools to account, particularly in their 'achievement' judgement on the new score cards. Given the focus throughout the latest framework on pupils with SEND or disadvantage, I would expect the measure for those that didn't meet the expected standard (which is over-represented by pupils with SEND or disadvantage) to feature prominently in their thinking.
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