Is this school govenor's take on Progress 8 scores correct?

I am going to answer the original post as someone who would be considered to be an "expert" in school governance. Quite frankly OP this is a school that deserves to be in the situation it is in and Ofsted have made the right call in putting it into special measures. There is no question to me that the head teacher and the governor you quote are living in some parallel universe, just not accepting what Ofsted have said about the school. I can only hope that somebody outside of the school comes to their senses and does what is required, sacks the governing body so that an interim executive board takes over - I am currently doing two, so I do know what I am talking about. If an IEB does take over then the first question they will be asking themselves is whether the head teacher is capable of turning the school around. From your post, the answer is no and so they will have to be dismissed as well, unless all this is just talk to make them look better.
Bottom line is that progress 8 is now the measure that is most important and it is much more difficult to game the system with Progress 8 because it is based across all schools nationally.
As for any posters that say their school cheats (as opposed to just trying to get the best possible results by legal means) then shame on you for not reporting the cheating. How does that sit with your professional responsibilities and more importantly how does it make all the staff in the vast majority of schools in the UK look to the general public? You are denigrating all those staff that every day go over and above what they need to do for the sake of their pupils.

The primary didn't artificially inflate his results user. Sorry if I made it seem that way. He had a reader, scribe and extra time due to his needs but first secondary withdrew this because he got level 4 in sats. They then predicted him 6's for his GCSEs and when they realised the amount of support he'd need to get him there they decided to bully us out instead.
Current school had good results but it's a different area and more pupils and they support those with send. Have to say they don't hark on about their results as much as the old school! In fact I've realised since ds left just how much they focused on it!

Charitably I'm assuming that user was talking about previous years when the league table qualification list wasn't so strict.

I don't understand how a school could make up KS2 scores for kids that don't have them - don't the DfE work from their own set of results?

I would say the opposite is more likely to be true, in that they've been gaming the figures in the past and come unstuck because the progress 8 is much harder to game.

My local school has been gaming the system for years so the headline figures look much better. Eg getting their a-c pass rate mainly through c grades or equivalents, pushing courses based on ease of scraping a pass, quantity not quality for everyone to boost the figures, 5 passes more likely to be a btech and catering than maths and English, crap support so the Sen figures come from milder issues that don't impact pass numbers etc but still allow Sen % to be used as an excuse. Progress 8 is now showing all that up because they can't game it as easily. And I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up in sm next inspection.

@noblegiraffe English no longer has tiered papers and IGCSE doesn't count for the league tables so god knows how such gaming would even be possible. I expect the English results to be quite low this year as all students will have to deal with an unseen piece of 19th century literature. Some of my students have found this hard. So I'm not sure how those working at the 1-5 level are even going to access that part of the paper.

Many schools offer options with the stats in mind - forcing kids to take a language for example. I remember a school a few years back doing this by blocking French against BTEC Health and Social Care/Travel and Tourism so the bright kids had to take French or something that many parents would see as an unacceptable option. Now they do it by 'Pathways' or the 'Ebacc route' and only offer the bright kids the Ebacc subjects.

However, this is what the government want, it's seen as a good thing for as many students as possible to take a range of academic subjects. By 'gaming' the league tables, the schools are actually offering these kids a better quality education than what used to happen when bright kids were put in for vocational qualifications that counted as 4 GCSEs but wouldn't help them with their A-level choices.

Cheating on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. User talks about her school entering pupils for multiple English qualifications. I don't know about English, but I do know about maths. It's supposed to be impossible to enter a student for Foundation and Higher maths. You can't do it through the exam board and as maths exams are mostly sat on the same day across the exam boards, you shouldn't be able to do OCR Foundation and Edexcel Higher. However, exam centres can vary the times of exams where there is a clash, so technically, you can enter a kid for OCR Foundation, Edexcel higher, have the kids sit two papers in the same day but vary the start time due to the 'clash'. The exam boards won't know because they don't compare entries. This is also malpractice, it's not allowed.

A blogger made a FOI to Ofqual to get the stats on schools which do this. 172 centres out of 5314 did, however this only represented 423 candidates or 0.062% of the total entries.

So this sort of blatant cheating does occasionally happen, but only in an incredibly small minority of cases.

justmaths.co.uk/2017/04/26/conditions-of-entry/

I'm sure there are some schools that do play the stats and cheat. Not enough to explain why the school is in the bottom 10% though.

Bit IME it is never a good sign when the Head and the governing body blame a poor Ofsted on Ofsted themselves or other schools. It usually goes quite a long way towards explaining the grade they got.

User's experience does not chime with any of mine.
The secondary I know best has only this year (current Y9s going into Y10 in September) re-arrange its option blocks to facilitate ebacc. They're far more interested in pupils being able to take subjects they love and are good at than playing the system.
Funnily they think pupils perform best when they've chosen subjects of their own volition!

The governor is trying to put a positive spin on it. While there is likely to be a small element of truth in his/her position, it's fairly insignificant in comparison with the much larger problem of the school simply not being effective. An effective school can get decent Progress 8 scores without 'gaming'.

If the school is put in special measures most likely the majority of the governors will be replaced - and I think that the governors' current argument shows why. Instead they will bring in experienced, skilled governors who will look closely at the school and look to make a real positive change to allow the pupils to reach their potential, rather than just whinging about perceived injustices.

My children have moved & are moving into secondary schools from an independent school that did not do SATS.

I'm actually quite sad about this in my dd's case as I feel she was underachieving when she first started Year 7 & her progress data will not be included in her schools Progress 8 score so will not reflect how they have helped her to improve.

And a school that blames others for its poor performance rather than looking to see how it can improve, is a school I would avoid.

Absolutely this.

Any school put into Special Measures but which refuses to take a long, hard look at itself first and foremost is a school I would not want to be a pupil or teacher in.

OP. I'm not a teacher. I'm going to disregard the discussion with user apart from to say I do not believe them.

Some schools more than others choose the courses they run to help the stats look good.

For example when ebacc was being measured, they set out the GCSE options to more or less force able students into qualifying for ebacc by ensuring they did an MFL and history/geography. We read on here about different coloured option forms being given out to constrain choices.

Many schools choose different English boards dependent whether their students are top end or at the pass borderline. Are they gaming the system, or trying to ensure that their students have the best chance of getting a good grade for the English (especially when a pass is the entry to many college courses)?

Some schools (eg the other school in our town) are a bit 'free and easy' with the compulsory RE bit of the national curriculum. in as much as they include for all children a bit for parents to sign withdrawing from RE with their GCSE option forms (thus freeing up the time for something else). Other schools only withdraw if a parent proactively asks.

All of these could be viewed as 'gaming the system'. But equally they could be viewed as trying their best for the children.

Personally I don't believe that so much gaming goes on that a school with bottom 10% progress 8 would miraculously climb to say top 50% if they 'gamed' the same as average schools. And a school that blames others for its poor performance rather than looking to see how it can improve, is a school I would avoid.

I maintain my point that, as User has fundamentally misunderstood how baseline levels are created / used - and who can and can't be included - it is really quite likely that none of the remainder of his / her claims would stand up to similar scrutiny.

Primary schools work very hard to MAXIMISE SATs levels - rightly or wrongly, through very extensive teaching to the test - because that is their key performance metric, whereas User is claiming that minimising them to improve secondary progress stats is widespread...

He / she is also claiming that those who arrive without SATs are included in statistics - which is also wrong.

i suspetc that the other things he / she reports are 'rumour / misinformation / inflated gossip' in a similar manner, with no good underpinning data.

A child in DS's cohort was found to have a mobile phone with them in the exam hall - not using it, just had it with them as hadn't handed it in. GCSE invalidated straightaway...

I teach in one of the best schools in England thanks. I am neither naive or blind. You are wrong.

Why are you saying "How dare you?" I made the only suggestions I could think of for why you would assert something so blatantly untrue, and keep on and on asserting it, for no reason at all, that I can think of, when you MUST know it is untrue. If you do work in a school in England, you HAVE to know it is untrue, realisitically

@user1497480444 How dare you! I am just a classroom teacher, teaching my students and not letting them cheat! I don't know how you think I could play the stats. We do not generate the KS2 sats. I have no say over them. Given the school I teach in, we pretty much ignore them anyway and act on the assumption that all of our students should have got the highest level and then act accordingly. My school is not data obsessed. I have never been given a list of target grades for my classes for example. I have explained how we took a decision that actively harmed us in the first release of this data (and we're not the only school in this situation I believe). We track our students of course and I know who's underachieving. What you say about all schools being involved in some gigantic mark fraud is just not true. In a 100% final exam subject with no tiered paper that everyone has to enter, I'd be intrigued to know how on Earth I would achieve that!

My dc's first primary gamed the Sats, my ds failed his EYFS apparently he was capable of doing very little - that was a surprise to me - it took me 3 months to get the official report from them with the results on it. Lots of parents had to openly question the end of Year 1 result as their levels were recorded as 2 sub levels below what they'd been told previously - we just wanted to know what level our child was actually on. HT muttered that it would be changed, apparently the deputy head(class teacher) got confused - believe me she is not the type to get confused about anything! They are now Outstanding....there was nothing outstanding about that school!

Also none of us at our school as the time to indulge in gaming stats. We're too busy teaching, marking and planning (I include our SLT in that by the way).

Schools don't play the stats!!! We look crapper than usual as we were allowed to keep on with English IGSE for a couple of years (doesn't count for new tables). We only switched English Language this year as the government decided (half way through the course) that without English Language GCSE (not IGCSE) sixth form places will not be funded (this has also caused problems for our international boarders). You did refer to incorrect stuff on the invigilation thread as was pointed out to you several times.
I had to whistleblow on a colleague. It turned out for the best for everyone. So there we go. Are you in a union? You bloody should be.
You keep saying the crap from your rubbish school is widespread. IT BLOODY ISN'T.

The OP was about the stats,

I've been whistleblower before, @DoctorDonnaNoble it did no good what so ever. I've learnt whistleblowers are not in any way protected, not that it mattered to me, particularly, as I had another job lined up, but if I hadn't I would have been left unable to pay my mortgage. I've seen it happen to others.

I have been morally complicit in some schools, but not in others. I have stuck to the law and suffered for it, but in the end decided its not worth it. I'm changing schools again now, and have decided to stick to the law again in my next school, because honestly, i am an education professional, so it really seems pointless not to. I don't know how long I will last though!

I did actually raise the possibility of reporting something in an exam room just a few weeks ago, but the invigilators were split. Two agreed to, two said they would deny it. In the end, reporting it would have harmed a lot of children who had tried very hard, and I didn't go ahead.

Its odd that you pick out the invigilation thread, where as far as I remember, nothing I said on there was procedurally incorrect. Plenty of lying and cheating described in other threads though!

What do you men by "doing harm"? I am telling the truth. What is harmful about that? People should know what is going on, don't you think. Corruption is devastating to our whole way of life, integrity and culture. it needs stamping out. People need to understand the league tables and education system for what they actually are.

@user1497480444 - if you are not taking crap then you are morally complicit in al of this. Whistleblowers are protected. You are doing a lot of damage on a lot of threads. What you describe isn't common. In the slightest. And is sometimes just plain wrong (your discussion on invigilation thread). Our school has had a random inspection of exams. They're very thorough and you get no warning. I happen to teach in a school that is always near the very top in league tables. We do not 'play' the system. I resent you implying we do. There are very very few controlled assessments now. If your school is as bad as you say you have a moral (and I would argue legal) responsibility to DO something about it.