The league tables are out - let's talk Progress 8

Yes it definitely did Madonna !

Whole other thread about it at the mo jammy of you are interested. I think there is an acceptance that examiners can prejudge, as teachers often do, too... it's very hard no to. Most, but not all, poor handwriting does belong o boys. Apparently, a girl gets very reprimanded for poor presentation, though, whereas, in a boy , it gets more 'accepted'. Which isn't very helpful...

And vice versa.

Did it affect your OFSTED Piggy? I'm interested to see how P8 plays out in inspections where there is low P8 but high Att8.

'Oh, and noble - it's quite possible that at least one reason boys do so much worse than girls using these measures has to do with handwriting bias....'

Do children lose marks for scruffy handwriting at GCSE?

That mirror article is outrageous and has caused all sorts of drama with our parents this week on social media.

The Mirror excelled itself with its league tables reporting this year....

"'This year, there were more points to be gained by getting from an A to an A* (1.5) than from an F to an E (0.5 I think)'

How is that not biased? Why was it changed?"
It is biased. And makes life much more difficult for high schools in grammar areas.

Ha - are they! That's very amusing...

"Our local, superselective boys' grammar has a 'below average' P8 listing for this year."
it is rather typical of that particular school that they are outraged the system wasn't tweaked for its benefit......

The school I teach at on P8 comes put as nearly the worst in the LA. But it remains the one all the parents scrap to get their DCs in to.

Cross posts with MultiVac but I agree completely.

I find these tables deeply unhelpful. Parents desperately need clear and useful information about schools and this isn't it. I contacted the head of DS1's school when their provisional progress 8 score was published as it was below 0 and worse than last year.

I learned so much about how the score is calculated and importantly what it excludes (which in the case of DS1's school is very relevant).

A school can't be boiled down to a number in this relentless government quest to measure and test. No wonder so many teachers are leaving.

Our local, superselective boys' grammar has a 'below average' P8 listing for this year.

Which makes sense, of course, if you know that IGCSEs aren't counted when they tot up the scores.

How many parents do know that, I wonder?

And how many parents know that it's a child's first attempt at an exam in a particular subject that is counted, not the grade they actually leave school with?

And how many parents know that, up until this year, a qualification that can be taught in as little as three days (the ECDL) counted the same as a GCSE in, say, history, for accountability purposes?

I cannot tell you how much I loathe the league tables, and the pernicious impact they've had on our education system since 1992...

Oh, and noble - it's quite possible that at least one reason boys do so much worse than girls using these measures has to do with handwriting bias....

Please could someone explain in layman jargon. In my area the schools with most disadvantaged pupils did really badly, way below average on p8. What does it mean? The school with tiny and richer catchment came out well above average.

Hmmmm. that does explain rather a lot...

I just clicked options just above the table (having selected 4 local schools to compare) to see P8 by prior attainment.

I would have expected (on no evidence at all) that these 'sub P8s' would have used the same definition of 'average' as the P8 as a whole. However, instead it seems to use the 'average for similar students nationwide', which is probably sensible but means that a school with very high numbers of LA students could be in the odd position of being 'average' in all 'sub P8s' but 'above average' overall.

Blimey : that is detailed digging! I didn't realise these things and I thought I had a good handle on P8!

Interesting - just been digging a little further for DC's school.

High prior attainers was the biggest group numerically, and got above average P8. Middle attainers next largest group, really exceptionally high P8. Low prior attainers, counted as average P8 but numerically higher P8 than the higher attainers.

What was interesting was that the definition of 'average' moved, in a way I wasn't expecting. The reporting at prior attainment level is subtle enough to compensate for the fact that lower prior attainers have higher P8 in general, so the 'numerical P8' which got the school 'average' for lower attainers was significantly higher than the P8 that got them 'above average' for the higher attainers.

Yes, I do. I think ours did, too. But it wasn't good enough it seems!!

It depends what you mean by highest attainers. ]

Yes, they possibly lost the top 0.5 - 1% - but there was a full maths set who pretty much all got L6s in year 6 and Level 8 or 9 in their GCSEs, so it isn't a large number IYSWIM?

I think the key is that it loses its highest attainers, though? They're the ones that can bugger P8. As can the PPs so if you don't have many of them, and the ones you do have fare well, you'll be fine!

Piggy, my DC's comp is as leafy as they come, has a very high attaining cohort, and loses a % of its highest achievers to superselective grammars. It has a very low %PP and %SEN for a comp, by virtue of its catchment. It also has a well above average Progress8, with the highest Progress8 being for the middle attainers.

jammy, at least the problem will go away once all subjects are on numerical grades (so from summer 2019 results, which is when e.g. the more obscure languages are first examined).

Yes, I imagine so cant : might make sense.

They shouldn't, no jammy but at my school we have always struggled against the very high targets set for academically good, but not brilliant, students - hence our weak P8. Our attainment 8 score is much much better.