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

yes they are, in some classes it will be half of the class or more.

Progress8 scores do not include children who have no SATs scores.

See p19 of this

So a school cannot manipulate its Progress8 by giving such children artificially low starting points - they are simply not counted in the stats.

Have any of them, in your opinion, been good? my last school was very good, and the one two before that was exceptionally good, although ofsted failed it twice.

Baseline data in a secondary is primary SATs results LOTS of students come without primary SATs grades, enough to make a big difference if they are all estimated at well below where they actually are.

Ah, sorry, it is THAT user again.

User, I know that you say you have worked in a very large number of schools over a long and unusually varied career. Have any of them, in your opinion, been good?

User, the first at least is not possible. Baseline data in a secondary is primary SATs results - internal data has no validity whatever in terms of progress measures. I am afraid that your misunderstanding of that makes me view the remainder of your list with a pinch of salt.

I would say, IME, that 'gaming' the system is insufficiently common, and insufficient in nature, to invalidate the system entirely - and insufficient to drop a 'school that is doing everything by the book' into Special Measures if it is 'actually a good school'.

I would say that some gaming - e.g. allowing a pupil to retake a piece of coursework, or offering verbal feedback on it - does occur, at the margins, and has a marginal effect.

However I would say that it is not that 'schools with good results / league table positions have faked them all and schools in low positions are honest' - overall, it is probably at the same relatively low level across virtually all schools (though the pressure to adjust is much higher in schools with low results and in vulnerable positions) and therefore has very little actual effect, if that makes sense?

I'm in school with excellent stats. These are acquired by:

*artifically lowering the baseline data, the standards that children arrive with,

*forcing children through several different English GCSE qualifications and taking their best grade for progress 8, even when the children's time would be better spent on something else.

• cheating in coursework, dictating controlled assessments to children, giving children the mark scheme etc.

*turning a blind eye to children cheating blatantly in GCSE exams, for example pretending not to notice answers being looked up on phones in the exam hall.

• entering as many children as possible in second language exams in their first language

*only putting children forward for expulsion if they are under acheiving academically, no matter what their behaviour is like.

• forcing children who are predicted U/G through exams because they can't get lower than their prediction, and a few might flukily get slightly higher, if there is a large multiple choice component.

• stopping the tape and correcting students in language exams.

I could go on!

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

no, why would they? they have caused a climate of fear, where schools have to do anything and everything to tick ofsted boxes, at the expense of education, on pain of loss of livlihood.

I'd rther put my child in a school in special measures than an outstanding school. The last school I was in to be judged "outstanding" was awful, violence was rife, children's results faked all over the place. The only "outstanding" aspect of the school was the PR job the head was doing. ( This including removing scene-of-crime tape from school premises)

Gosh I thought that gaming had pretty much died out with the new specs, eg less double entry, IGCSEs etc. Just shows how little I know!! We don't do anything game-y at my school (maybe we should!)

Absolutely correct. The whole system is corrupt to the very core. The stats are totally and utterly without meaning. most schools with good league table positions have cheated and faked, and most people know this. Ofsted ratings are pretty much random.

Gaming the system is still rife. We were praised for not doing it as much as others butstillshite