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

youarenotkiddingme the second school sounds better, but the first school will have better stats, I can guarantee it! And so will the primary school who artificially inflated his achievements to start with.

Those students who do a first language gcse have as much right to that qualification as any other. because it is meaningless and skews the stats?

Many of our Chinese heritage children for example spend years going to Saturday schools to learn this then they should do the exam under the Saturday school as well, not their weekday school.

Forcing children out who won't make progress 8

This happened to my ds. He started year 7 with good sats because the school he was in supported him. He couldn't keep up without support and the short and long of it is the school didn't feel the investment in support would acquire him the predicted grades. They they withdrew everything until he collapsed and eventually I had no choice to do a managed move which I'd avoided up until then when it was suggested for things like him being bullied.
The school always maintained my ds has no behavioural issues so the move wasn't because of this.
I now have to take him to a school miles from home.

I believe schools fix data - I've seen it. I've watched my ds be supported/helped to achieve and it's left him in a worse place because now he's actually years behind.

His new school don't seem to do this though yet are a really good school. So it can be done somehow

I only tell it how it is. There are a lot of posters on MN who just have absolutely no idea whats going on. The OP here, for example, seemed to be under the illusion that school statistics have some sort of statistical validity, and there was another poster who seemed to genuinely believe that gaming the figures was minimal, and occurred rarely. It is absolutely the first and foremost priority in schools. Otherwise your school goes into special measures and you get sacked. Fixing the figures is far far far more important than education. It matters way more how a child looks on paper than what they have actually learnt.

With regards to CA; this year it was still part of all courses apart from maths and English, next year it will still be part of a number of specs.

It is the current yr9 that will be 100% new spec GCSEs and even then some will still have a coursework element (GCSE Computer Science) and there are still a variety of vocational courses available

I work in a private school where SLT are expected to invigilate some exams where they have not taught the courses. On my first exam CIE showed up ten minutes prior to starting and watched us like hawks. As they should.

Both JCQ and CIE carry out invigilation inspections.

never ever anywhere I have worked, nor where anyone I know works.

Honestly, user14, if your posts about your current place of employment are in any way genuine, this school is an unprecedented disgrace.

& you should be reporting it, not colluding in it & smirking all over MN whilst implying yours is typical practice. It seriously isn't - & goodness knows I'm not saying that as a defender of the state of UK education.

user1497480444

Total BS. Both JCQ and CIE carry out invigilation inspections.

If you say this is happening in a school where you are working why haven't you reported it?

a lot of external invigilators are very young and just earning a bit of pocket money. They don't have any real interest in exams. They don't walk around or anything. It's the support staff that really facilitate it.

Why would external invigilators permit cheating?

They have no vested interest in results whatsoever.

Nor does your Exams Officer, who is supervising the external invigilators, right?

Why would any of these people be risking their jobs to encourage blatant cheating? What possible benefit could they gain from this?

its not teachers, its external invigilators. No teachers invigilate at all. courses which have done CAs in the last few months. Geography, DT, science. maybe others, but those I have seen.

Who on earth is running the main examination hall, & not docking phones before students come in?

I'll give you a clue: in the UK, it shouldn't be teachers.

Which courses are you running which include controlled assessments?

I only run the SEN exam rooms, not the main exam hall. Cheating in exams certainly happens, too many students have boasted of it to me for them all to be lying.

As to SATS scores being used for progress 8, these scores can and are faked, its easy and not uncommon.

Cheating and faking is rife throughout. I don't beleive any teacher who says they are unaware of it. Maybe a few, wondering around with tightly closed eyes and their hands over their ears, but most must be very well aware. I know of a few teachers who refuse to participate in it, but none who are not aware that is is happening.

BUT even if the scores are all spot on, perfect, accurate and exactly what they claim to be, they are still invalid.

Look at the way they are calculated, they have absolutely no statistical validity what so ever. You would have to take a SEVEN YEAR AVERAGE to come to a number that would be acceptable as meaningful in any sense.

So A. Numbers are NOT real. and B if numbers WERE real ( which they are not) would still be meaningless.

Our head dropped the ECDL course earlier in the year when he found out it wouldn't count towards the league tables. They moved the students onto another course mid year, the parents were livid at changing the course half way through. Perfect example of gaming there.

It counts in the league tables this year, it won't next year because it's shit.

PiXL club recommend entering all Y11s for ECDL because it counts as a full GCSE and takes maybe a week to get through. Any head saying that they enter everyone because it's a valuable qualification is having a laugh.

"They're also on the look out for schools that enter the whole of Y11 for ECDL."

I have no problem with Ofsted looking for that but I don't like the idea that doing so is automatically seen as a bad thing - I spoke to a local head who used to only enter those not doing ICT but as GCSE ICT is no more they will now enter all the students (even if ECDL doesn't count in the league tables any more) because they think that it is a valuable qualification.

Lots of 'gaming' goes on. So much so OFSTED released a statement recently telling schools not to do it because it harms the childrens progress. However I think the only difference it makes is really only 1 drop/gain in the rating.

Ofsted is no longer rated by a significant number of parents/teachers. I dont rate anything they write about schools. What they wrote in our schools inspection report genuinely looked like they'd gone to the wrong school. It bore very little resemblance to whats actually experienced.

That user is still teaching at a school that does CAs, apparently. CW is just about plausible if it's a school doing IGCSE.

I'm not sure what mark schemes are being given out that could possibly be inappropriate. Perhaps user14 means that schools are sharing the assessment criteria for tasks set?

I would be concerned about students with mobile phones in the examination hall. User14 has claimed elsewhere to be 'running' public exams, so if this is happening on her watch, it's really worrying.

Surely if this is what other schools are doing Ofsted would pick up on this?

Yes, they would. They're also on the look out for schools that enter the whole of Y11 for ECDL.

I don't think it's worth getting hung up on whether the school is refusing to game the Progress 8 scores, it's unlikely that they will have been put into SM on this alone. I would be more concerned about the SLT's refusal to take any of the Ofsted report on board and spend their time appealing the findings, rather than concentrating on making the required improvements

What were the other areas that were below standards, other than results and progress?

To quote the relevant part of the document can't linked to:

"There will be some pupils (those arriving at secondary school from the independent sector or abroad) who have no key stage 2 results to use as the baseline for the Progress 8 measure. These pupils’ scores will not be included in the Progress 8 measure (and the pupils will not be included in the denominator when calculating the average of the progress scores for the school)."