Could a teacher tell me how important these ratings are when choosing a school

[trunumber]

It's on a compare schools government website, and I've just found it and found our first choice of school rates MUCH lower than our second choice. Are these ratings important or meaningful?

No!
In a nut shell!

Would you mind telling me a little more, if you have time? (I don't know anything about it)

My friend asked exactly the same recently. I have attached my long reply rather than type it all out again! For what it’s worth, my eldest is 8 and I am also a teacher.

The scores essentially are analysis of the quality of teaching at the school compared to the average English primary school.

Average scores like what you've screenshot essentially mean the amount the children learn between year 2 and year 6 as measured by SATS is about average compared to all other schools taking into account the children's starting knowledge in Year 2 which will be different for each child.

A school with a higher score (above average or well above average) essentially 'teaches' each student more by year 6 than an average school does taking into account what each student knew at the end of year 2. In a school with 'below average' or 'well below average' ratings, children aren't making the progress you'd expect.

SAT scores alone can be misleading which is why parents are provided with this additional information. A school's average SAT score can look deceptively good if it has a larger than average share of pupils that are very clever. However, it is possible, despite the good SAT scores, the teaching should be awful and the pupils would have learned much and done even better given how clever they are isywim.

Average as a ranking isn't at all bad though and like previous posters mentioned there are a lot of other things that go into selecting a school like ethos, pastoral care, extracurricular opportunities etc.

However, I definitely wouldn't say it doesn't matter. I would never send my DDs to a school where progress on any of the three measures was below average.

Hope that helps!

Thank you so much, that's really helpful

I don't agree- I think that progress scores are important, far more important than straight percentages of those meeting national standard. All children should be making good progress regardless of their academic ability. I would be put off a school if they were only making national average progress tbh.

I agree they do matter!

Average isn't bad though. The nature of the statistical analysis means by definition most schools have to be average, even if they are good...

'Progress measures' though don't take into account external factors.

The children at one school could be from chaotic homes where education isn't a priority - the actual teaching to maintain a child's progress could be superb. The children at another school could have 50% of parents paying private tutors to raise their dcs achievements.
You can have dc entering a school with falsely high SATs scores from the previous KS, which completely ruins the 'progress' data.

It is worth looking at, as one factor, but it is not helpful on it's own.

Thank you eveyone, I really appreciate it.

For reference, we have chosen 3 schools - the average one is actually our 3rd choice. Our first (rated outstanding by ofstead but at its last inspection years ago) is 'below average' in reading. Our second choice is well above average for reading and maths (average for writing)

In terms of demographics, choice one and two serve an almost identical population (but the better scoring one is a much smaller school)

I would be put off a school if they were only making national average progress tbh.

Then you clearly don't understand how averages work. Are you Michael Gove?

You've had some great replies OP. It's also worth a think about logistics and siblings. If you have a school within walking distance, do you really want to drive every day?

Home life is much more of a factor than school quality in determining a childs success too.

That's not entirely true BackforGood

If some new external event happened between Year 3 and Year 6 that was highly destabilising for a child it could skew the results.

However, the impact of parents that care or don't care about education would already be reflected in the KS1 starting points which is why average anticipated progress to be made is assessed relative to a starting point. The amount of anticipated progress is also contextualised in the analysis when assessing what is average.

Also, confidence intervals are applied to the results so a small school with one outlier student wouldn't drag the overall score down dramatically.

The analysis isn't perfect (no statistical analysis is) but its also not as crude as you suggest.

All these things matter but shouldn't be taken in isolation. They all mean slightly different things.

It's just different ways of working out how well kids are doing. I would be worried of lots of scores were below average or if progress scores fall.

@trunumber

Thank you eveyone, I really appreciate it.

For reference, we have chosen 3 schools - the average one is actually our 3rd choice. Our first (rated outstanding by ofstead but at its last inspection years ago) is 'below average' in reading. Our second choice is well above average for reading and maths (average for writing)

In terms of demographics, choice one and two serve an almost identical population (but the better scoring one is a much smaller school)

Like I said before, I'd be very reluctant to send my child to a school where progress was below average for reading or math.

The teaching at a school like that is going to be in circa the bottom 20% nationally. Take a look at the breakdown by pupil characteristics as well as the historic trend to see if you can get a sense of what's going on.

A super old Ofsted is probably not every helpful. I'd focus on the up to date data you currently have.

Also consider this:
In e.g. 2010, a school has great results and a great (outstanding) recent OFSTED.
Parents who really care about results (more than about pastoral stuff) jump through all kinds of hoops to get their children into this school.
A couple of years later, the head teacher leaves and a new head takes over.
The new head may be really clueless, but OFSTED never comes back, so the school retains its 'outstanding' (and still has it in 2020).
Meanwhile there are a lot of staff changes and the quality of teaching goes down under the new leadership.
But the children taking SATS in the new head's first two or three years have profited from many years under the old head, so SATS results stay very high.
Every year, the children who start in reception are children whose parents really care about great results.
Another two years later, maybe in 2016, parents of the children who joined after the 2010 great results and OFSTED, and are now in Y5 or so, realise that their children really aren't where they expected them to be. The school is not delivering. The parents (who chose this school because they care, a lot, about results) send their kids to private tutoring to fix this.
Because of all the private tutoring going on, the results remain high. (In our school for instance, up to 95% of Y5 and Y6 children attend private tutoring, at least once per week...)
The next cohort of parents (who chose this school because of the results) realise that the school is not delivering. They send their kids to private tutoring.
The results stay high, and more parents who care mostly about results, choose this school.
Etcetera etcetera...

Great results can genuinely be a self-fulfilling prophecy that has nothing to do with the quality of teaching, and everything with the fact that people who chose a school for its great results, will make sure that their children actually do achieve good results, even if they have to do this by paying for private tutoring.
There are of course also high-achieving schools that genuinely just have the right culture and attitude and just get things right. But in absence of any kind of recent OFSTED, I wouldn't trust the results one little bit - at least not if the school has a relatively affluent intake. Chances are that the school is simply coasting, relying on its intake (involved, interested parents, and children who will be privately tutored). A school that gets great results from a relatively deprived intake, that's a different story altogether!

I would be put off a school if they were well below in all areas year on year. I would wonder what was not being fixed. I would also be put off by a high staff turnover. That's all that would bother me I think.

The results have full meaning when you have the information about the children and what they have overcome.

Each year has their own story of children with issues, behaviour problems, lack of parental support or lots of it. Problems at home, death in the family, mobility, poverty, what baggage a child brings with them, if they have been in school, or health issues.

Comparing like for like, that year has done as well as any other school with the same starting levels. Has each school overcome the same issues? You can not tell from the data.

Are all schools providing the same pastoral support as those children need? It doesn't show in the data.

Thanks so much everyone

There is a way to look at the data over a period of 2/3 years I think so you can see movements. Average (yellow) is ok but green is better. Teachers rarely look at these tables. Governors and Ofsted do!

Lots of parents look at schools and instinctively know where there are plenty of parents with dc like theirs. A school with below average results will probably reflect its intake. Is that intake like your DC?

The analysis definitely does not penalise schools for having a lower ability intake (though being deprived is NOT the same as being low ability) as some seem to erroneously be suggesting.

You can have mediocre SATs and very high progress scores as the progress is assessed against how much progress each type of pupil actually makes in England on average. The amount of progress on average a low ability student (based on KS1 scores) makes is very different to the average progress a high ability pupil makes on average and this is all baked into the statistical analysis.

The analysis isn't based on a fixed expectation but on how real pupils in each category are progressing across every school in England in comparison. Also, the confidence intervals help neutralise the impact of one or two students in a small school having outlier scores that overly skew the results.

A school would have to have had a significantly above average number of extremely destabilising shock events (like a death etc) impact the cohort after Year 2 for it to skew the results meaningfully. That could happen though it is unlikely which is why the data is provided for 3 years. One year you might have an above average number of shock events but three consistent years of that is so unlikely it is virtually impossible.

Look to see what the three years of data looks like and if the below average progress scores are a consistent feature, I'd be concerned.

In a school that has high SATs but low progress scores, in my experience, it is usually one specific cohort that isn't being supported or challenged properly rather than poor teaching all around. The data when you click on it further will break down the progress scores for each ability grouping as well so you can dig into the picture a bit more.

Where I live, Poor Sats and progress nearly always reflect intake. Just too many lower achieving children who are already disadvantaged by the age of 3. It’s very difficult to get either great progress or great Sats results from these dc. Not 100% of dc are struggling of course but the stats don’t tell you about them. If all DC caught up by great teaching then no one would get below 100 in the Sats. So of course external factors count as well as nurture.

The progress assessment of low ability children is compared to how other low ability children in the country are performing.

I get statistical analysis is tricky to understand but its a relative comparison not an absolute measurement of how much progress is made. I.e. its not comparing the kids to a target, its comparing them to how other low ability children have actually progressed! A school with a low ability intake would only have low progress scores if other low ability kids typically do much better in most schools in the country...

As a governor we could see how well our lower ability children progressed in school. Obviously we saw the national benchmarks too. It always gave us great concern when DC progressed slowly and lots of extra effort was expended to help these dc. Quite often with less improvement than we had hoped for. That’s all within the school and we certainly were not the only school with our bottom 20% being difficult to shift. It doesn’t really matter who you are comparing the DC to. You just know you might not want to be in a school where 70% of DC are in this category and have below average starting points if that isn’t you or your dc.

What's funny is that the school with the below average rating is known as the most academic school in the area. Truthfully it's a relatively wealthy area (we moved here when I was pregnant for the better schools) and there is less than 1 mile between the 3 schools so the geographic area isn't that different.

That's not surprising at all trunbar.

I'm also a school governor. The school in our area with below average progress scores in math has some of the highest absolute SAT scores and is also demographically wealthy.

Low progress scores are usually because:

1. The school isn't challenging the most able enough and letting them coast to good results but not fully what they are capable of
2. The school isn't supporting its low ability cohort and they fall further behind than they would in other schools.

The perception of parents isn’t always accurate though and can be years out of date. People think schools are awful when they have been good for years. Parents often don’t look at stats and don’t know.

If a school is measured against other schools and is below average, it’s DC are still below average. Just because a school is viewed as academic (not sure how parents come to this conclusion!) it doesn’t ensure great teaching there. Do parents just think it gives more homework? You would assume starting points are above average for the majority so it appears it’s not getting great progress from dc. Why - very difficult for outsiders to know. If they publish their Improvement Plan it will help you.