Guide to Progress 8

[noblegiraffe]

Anyone interested in secondary education will be hearing more about Progress 8 over the coming months, especially when the league tables come out in January.

I think this link is a good explanation of how it will work:
www.tes.com.c.tes.ent.platform.sh/sites/default/files/progress_8_dps_2.pdf

And why it's not necessarily a measure of school effectiveness:
educationdatalab.org.uk/2015/05/why-do-pupils-at-schools-with-the-most-able-intakes-tend-to-make-the-most-progress/

And a criticism of the calculations:
headguruteacher.com/2015/05/02/progress-8-looks-like-data-garbage-to-me/

Also, please remember that because of confidence intervals, you CANNOT say that a school that has a progress 8 score of 1 is better than a school that has a score of 0.9.

Interesting!
Some schools are openly stating what their score is this year, even though they do not have to.
If they have being gaming the system to prioritise the D to C borderline at the expense of the A and E pupils they will not be keen.
Definitely worth asking at open evenings - they can then present any justifications they want to for a lower score.
However if it is a case of 'the primaries are inflating the KS2 results' that doesn't wash as would be the same for all, so would not affect comparisons between secondaries.

noblegiraffe, the current/old Value Add measure also showed more progress for the better intakes/attainers, so it's not just a Progress 8 problem. Whether it's a problem with the 'progress' measure or just a fact of life, I don't know.