OFSTED Dashboard...can someone clear up some questions pls??

[educator123]

I have been looking at two schools and according to the dashboards they have the following results on one area -

school1 75%
school2 93%

so my question is - is the percentage based on the number of children sitting the SATS?

The reason i ask is because school1 would have had a yr6 group of 3-5 cant remember exactly.

School two had approx 30 yr6 children.

So if i am calculating right this would mean that .something from school 1 finished without a four (how can you can .something of a child?)

And school 2 would have had several children leave without 4s dispite intial glance leading people to believe the schools achievment is higher...

I am right or getting it all wrong???

• how can you calculate

Could some year 5 children have sat the tests a year early? Although in school 1, if your 3-5 children was actually 4 children, then 75% means 3 of them got at least a level 4 and 1 didn't - no .something of a child there, surely? And in school 2, obviously you would expect more children to leave without a level 4 in a school of equivalent merit, given that there are more children overall. However, the smaller a school the more ludicrous the statistics, because all it takes is 1 child to mess up your results/make you look like you have vastly improved without actually having had to make any effort.

Yes four would make sense...but i could only think of three children that left to secondary in the summer.

Just seems a little unfair that without giving details of number of children sitting exam, the percentage score can look alot worse along side another schhol with more children.

Hi educator 123

The best thing to do is go to the yearly SATs reports for KS2 for the schools concerned here: www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/. Try tracking this data of 5 years (which I think is fairer to schools and particularly good or bad (or small) years).

On the KS2 performance table after the blurb about the school and year on year comparison - you will be able to see how many pupils were eligible for KS2 assessment.

If the class size is ridiculously small (

Thats great - thank you.

I was unaware i got get SAT Results. As i thought they weren't published if numbers were low.

The school which is smaller has a total of low 40s on the role! But will have a look.

Thank you - i have looked but as i thought can only get2012 up for some reason and the previous years say SUPP. In 2012 there were 8 eligable!

educator results are suppressed when the number of pupils and spread of results is such that individual pupils could be identified from the published data

That's what i had heard before. Although in a tight knit community i think you could identify the lower achieving being as the percentage of children the achieved a level3 worked out to 1child!

*that achieved

Hi Educator123

link to pre-2012 performance tables was on list at left - but is here: www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/archive/index.shtml

Yes, it would help if the DfE would get a bit enlightened and let parents select a range of years (say 2006 - 2012) and see a simple table comparing results instead of looking this up 6 times - but I suspect schools don't like us accessing this data and following trends.

I like data so took the time to do it - interestingly a friend (who is a governor) was absolutely astounded to see the downward trend over the last 6 years given the previous 6 years (2000 - 2006) had been stable >90% NC L4+ at KS2 Maths & English.

I think this is a much more reasonable way of apprising consistent standard of performance than to present things as individual years - as we all know there are good and bad years, there are years with small classes, etc...

HTH

Thanks - unfortunately can't get the results for the school my children are at!?

Even 2011 is coming up as SUPP or NA at boths school but in different areas so hard to make a direct comparison of progress!

Very small schools are very hard to compare. Neither dashboard or the full figures can tell the whole story as percentages do identify individual DCs.

I know there is one more L5 in DD2s class than I expected, I bet she can work out who it was. Likewise I know several of DD1s year didn't do as well as expected.

Averages over 3-5 years are better, but even the changes in staff/HT or pupil numbers can have enormous effects.