Can anyone explain what the Progress 8 score is?

The child who is a C grade target who gets A* grades is a statistical anomaly where a level 6+ kid who gets a grade 9 is a far more regular and expected occurrence.
Grammar schools are full of level 6+ kids being measured from a 5A at KS2, where comps are not full of grade C kids smashing their targets by miles in a way that disadvantages grammars compared to comps. The picture, I suspect falls in favour of grammars.

Kids bombing out is an issue for any school, they’re going to cap the effect of those kids on Progress 8 from next year I think.

But conversely, if a child bombs GCSEs through illness, bereavement or generally going off the rails then their progress 8 can plummet far more if they are a high Ks2 attainer than if they are a low one. So that can affect high ability intake schools more dramatically.

The same point does apply, though, surely?

Pupil A is in a 'prior attainment group' of pupils who got 4cs at KS2. The average grade amongst this group might be Cs. Pupil A gets A*s, so their progress is very high.

Pupil B is in a 'prior attainment group' of pupils who got 5as at KS2. The average grade amongst this group might be As. They can get A*s, but they can't get higher, so their progress is capped.

I agree with the spreading of the top grades amongst 7s, 8s and 9s in all subjects from the coming year, this top cap will become less relevant - and this year (though not last year) progress from A to A* was 'over-weighted' in Progress8. Interestingly, localish grammars, some of which had very poor Progress figures last year, have much better figures this year, which suggests that the over-weighting of progress between higher grades has had an impact.

However I do think it is more nuanced than 'Grammar schools find it easier to get good Progress8 because their pupils come in higher than their initial figures suggest', and that is all I wanted to point out.

Yes but the old 'bright kids targeted A*s can only ever meet their target, not beat them' doesn't apply any more because the new measure isn't about comparison against targets but comparison against actual attainment which will be lower.

I reckon achievement at KS2 is way more capped than at KS4.

I agree with you that the size of the 2 effects may well be mismatched (and the 'top' cap will be less applicable in the world of 9s, as that change has already happened, while the KS2 one will take more years to work through). I just wanted to point out that there ARE two factors affecting the data in different directions. I am no supporter of grammar schools.

Oh look what I found (I should get a life), the data from this year.
Average attainment in maths and English at GCSE for those getting 5.8 at KS2 was just below an 8 at GCSE. So the grammar schools snaffling the 9s on those double weighted measures with their super-bright cohorts will be finding things a bit easier than those with a less selective intake.

There's three more years of old KS2 data to go yet, and I reckon achievement at KS2 is way more capped than at KS4.

Look at the transition matrix for maths. Only 50% of those who got a 5A at KS2 went on to get an A* at GCSE. And those 50% are far more likely to be the ones who actually got a level 6, or who sat GCSE early, and they are going to be overrepresented in grammar schools.

Remember Progress 8 isn't actually about levels of progress, it's about comparing attainment of the kids in your cohort to the attainment of kids nationally with the same starting point. If everyone with a 5A or above is registered as a 5A, then those who were really level 6+ are going to be more likely to be getting the A*s, making the grammar school cohort look better than the national picture.

Everyone else in the country is going to be in a fair fight (or as fair as you can expect from a crap system) against kids who actually did attain the same as them.

To be fair, noble, it's not as simple as that, because attainment at GCSE ihas also beencapped, at A*.

So while it is true that superselective grammars benefit in one way - because many will enter Y7 with higher 'true attainment' than their KS2 SATs measure - they lose in another because there is less scope for them to 'overachieve' against target at the end of Y11. So while a child whose SATs lead to a target of C can overachieve and get an A - 3 grades above their target - a child arriving at a ggrammar with a 5 can maybe only 'overachieve' against their target by a grade - from a top A.

If the government ever works out how to convert the new numerical SATs scores into Progress8 to new 9-1 GCSEs, there is a possibility that the anomalies at both points will be reduced, as the translation of scaled score to GCSE grade has the opportunity to be slightly more finely nuanced.

No, it's easier for them to get good progress 8 scores because achievement at KS2 is capped at the top of level 5 for the purposes of progress 8, while those in grammars will have a current level at the end of KS2 well ahead of that. They have to achieve less real progress to get high results than a pupil who genuinely got a high level 5.

It's another load of bollocks orchestrated to give parents something to obsess over and the government piss off educators even further. It's highly subjective and entirely reductionist.

The government will move onto whatever the next fad is soon and it'll be changed within 3 or so years.

To be fair, though, noble, I would take social background of pupils at a school into account when looking at progress8 for a school.

A school with a +0.6 Progress8 and very high PP in a rough part of a town, for example, would make me think it was a better school in terms of enabling pupils to make progress than a school with a similar Progrss8 from a cohort with very low PP and low social deprivation within the catchment.

Doesn't matter, background isn't taken into account.

Kid A and B will have different backgrounds- possibly [unless twins].
All sorts of variables.

Should also point out that if Kid A and B have identical KS2 point scores, then it doesn't matter if Kid A takes Music and Kid B takes PE, their average grade across their 8 GCSEs will be compared against each other regardless of which subjects they take.

Roughly if pupils in a school are making the expected levels of progress from Y6 to Y11 their progress 8 score will be zero.

This isn't quite true. It's not comparing students against some theoretical 'expected level of progress' but comparing them against the other students in the cohort who got the same KS2 scores as them.

Each GCSE grade is assigned points (when they are numerical, this will just be the same as the grade). They are added up for 8 GCSEs (there are rules about which GCSEs can count), then divided by 10 (as maths and English count twice) to give an average point score per GCSE.
If a kid gets an average point score of 5.5, but the average point score of kids nationally who got the same KS2 results as them was 6, then their progress 8 would be -0.5. The individual progress 8 scores for each kid in the school are added and divided by the number of kids to get the progress 8 for the school.

It's nothing to do with computer generated target grades for individual subjects, kids aren't compared against targets, they are compared against other kids' actual performance that year.

Many schools do well out of parents using tutors or simply relying on advantaged vs disadvantaged parents. Clearly some schools have more supportive and educated parents than others- they will impact on progress and results.
Some schools have higher hills to climb and are blasted at from all angles.
For example, more likely for a 'middle-class' school to get outstanding ofsted than one in a more deprived area.

But how do you know the progress is down to the school, and not down to parents paying for extra tuition? I'm in the south-east, and there does seem to be a big tuition industry.

I do find sneaky tactics to favour latest government obsessions deeply depressing.
Ebacc subjects have their place but other subjects also valuable. When parents look at bottom lines they often don't look at political shenanigans embedded in process.
Not surprised you are struggling op.
Hard to get head round unless you take at face value which is not acknowledging deep flaws.
Sigh, sigh, sigh!!!!

thanks whathave!

Dizzy, last year, progress across all grade boundaries was considered the same. So if you are iorried that this year's Progress8 favours schools with a high proportion of the more able (i'd probably join you in that concern), it is worth looking at last year's vs this year's progress8.

Certainly the grammar school which last year had a significantly negative progress8 now has an 'average' one of around 0, so the fiddling with the measurement seems to have done what politicians wanted it to do - turn the spotlight away from the fact that the grammar schools they favour don't always enable students to make good progress, and that their high raw results are because of their selective intake.

Not a daft question onewhitewhiskers. It doesn't really! Major flaw in all the techniques used to measure progress from ks2.
If you teach art or music your target grade will be based on maths or literacy scores. Not really fair!

There's a short video explaining the Progress 8 here www.gov.uk/government/publications/progress-8-school-performance-measure.
Roughly if pupils in a school are making the expected levels of progress from Y6 to Y11 their progress 8 score will be zero.
A positive score means they are performing better than expected and vice versa for negative.
A score of +1.0 means that on average pupils at this school are achieving one grade higher than expected. So +0.5 means half a grade better.
Any school with a score less than -0.5 may be a sign of a problem.
It is up to you to decide if half a grade means anything or not.
Please note that the data for 2017 is for results issued in August. I am aware that in some schools there will be changes by January when remarks are taken into account. (There have been some marking problems in some new GCSEs and marks may have gone up).
The other thing to take into account is that not all GCSE subjects count equally for Progress 8. English and Maths are double weighted but the next "bucket" is for EBacc subjects. So a pupil taking 3 EBacc subjects will score more for Progress 8 than one with only 2 subjects if they both have the same final grades and starting points.

apologies if this is a daft question but how can it compare progress across 8 subjects when KS2 sats will only give a baseline for literacy and maths?