Why do junior schools perform better?

[Starryknightcloud]

Ideally looking at school results and noticed this note on a junior school:

"Junior schools
We know from national data that pupils at junior schools, on average, have higher attainment scores at the end of key stage 2 than pupils at all other primary schools. This should be taken into account when comparing their results to schools which start educating their pupils from the beginning of key stage 1."

Does anyone know why this is? Is it an additional hoop to jump though to apply to separate infant and junior schools so self selects, or are they usually in more affluent areas? It's not a system I'm familiar with.

What is a junior school?

mine go to a private ‘junior school’ that is nursery to y6, but what you have posted implies something different? Our local area has a infants (r to y4) / middle school (y5 - 8) system, but that doesn’t match either.

Junior schools are Yr3-Yr6.

Junior schools would be KS2 schools, years 3 to 6. Presumably with separate infant schools beforehand. Not private.

They're different to the 3 tier system which have middle schools.

Gut instinct would say, school is focussed on KS2 style of teaching, vast difference in a school which has to focus on EYFS, KS1 and KS2 vs just one key stage. Likely to have subject leads who can just focus on the junior years - so more focussed on the smaller age range and similar things will work.

Interesting! And makes a lot of sense

So as far as I can work out the reason they put it like that is because it is difficult to explain/probably acknowledged that the whole assessment system is a bit dodgy...

From a brief Google (and being a primary teacher), I think the most likely explanation is that infant schools have more incentive to assess their 7 year olds as achieving well at end of key stage 1, because this is the only metric they are measures on, and will affect ofsted and parent views of the school. This is done by teacher assessment so can be manipulated without outright cheating. Because those children come to junior schools with higher assessments, the junior school then has an extra incentive to make sure they make good progress by the end of Year 6. So they target interventions at them and make sure that they pass.

I suspect that also there are more resources in junior schools available to key stage 2 pupils. They aren't dealing with the children who arrive with extremely complex send who need special school places. And many primaries have more TAs in reception/Year 1 than they do higher up the school.

ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2015/03/we-worry-about-teachers-inflating-results-we-should-worry-more-about-depression-of-baseline-assessments/

I can only comment on the schools in my area. I live in the middle of an area with three primary schools and one infant school which feeds into one junior school. The infant, and subsequently junior, school is in a slightly better area so it has slightly wealthier families in its catchment area and as it is a four form intake those living nearer the other schools can still apply and get in but only the ones who are more aspirational and look at the SATs results and Ofsted reports etc generally do apply for their children to go there so the school ends up with far more families who push their kids academically than the local primaries so therefore has more kids who would score well in whichever school they go to. Plus it also does hot house the kids from what I’ve heard and the less academic kids usually end up unable to cope and their parents take them out. But that’s just in my little area so might be totally different from other junior schools!

It refers to the difference between 2 tier and 3 tier systems. It is not differentiating between junior schools and infant + junior schools.

One of the issues with the 3 tier system is that the first schools are pretty much sheltered from any meaningful assessment as the children leave at 9.

Don’t forget too that a junior school will probably be either two form or three form entry. Smaller primaries (one form entry) will find their percentages are affected more due to smaller class sizes eg 3 lower ability will impact the % more in a class of 30 compared to a cohort of 90.

I'd like to see the source of the data, and what it actually shows.

In terms of data, separate Junior schools are often marked as performing less well, due to the manipulation of KS1 data where a separate Infant school (as said above) marks their pupils as having higher attainment than the same pupils would be given if they were in a Primary school. Thus leaving the junior school less to "add on" which is one poor way of judging a school.

The dfe is the source of the data.

What you say is true, but the fact that junior school results are overall higher but with less added value implies that the overestimating of pupils ability by infant schools actually leads to higher results at junior schools. I completely believe this, because schools often judge teachers on whether pupils are on track or above their prior attainment.

As an example:In a primary school, they may judge a borderline child as "working towards" in year 2. This takes pressure of junior staff and they let him slide further into the "working towards" category, knowing they won't get questioned too harshly as he is on track relative to previous data. On the other hand, the infant school wants their results to be good and judges the same child as "meeting expectations" (it's not manipulation or a little, they're just moe encouraged to be positive in their gradings). This puts pressure on the junior school to keep him at expectations, and he has boosters and intervention to keep him meeting expectations, as they know they will be scrutinised if he falls behind this.

Massively oversimplified, and all based on pure academic results, so the second scenario may not be better for that child, but an explanation of how there may be a positive to "over marking" of infant schools. More info on the link I shared above .

I don't think it is, as it's specifically noted on junior schools (KS2, years 3-6) results, and the same note doesn't appear on standard 2 tier infant+junior school.

I don't know much about the 3 tier system, I think I remember areas in the north east had it when I lived there so I assumed it's in geographical pockets.

That's so interesting @ThesebeautifulthingsthatIvegot thank you for explaining. I'm not in education and child hasn't started school yet so wasn't familiar with some of this.

Also good points about class sizes and self selecting based on reputation thank you.

The particular junior school I looked up did not perform well at all so I found the note interesting!