Is this school govenor's take on Progress 8 scores correct?

[PossumInAPearTree]

Dds school recently had a shocking Ofsted and got put in special measures. Bottom 10% of schools nationwide for progress and results according to the report.

Head has made it clear in emails home and to kids in assembly they disagree with the report, as has the governor.

Governor says the reason for the poor Progress 8 score is because the school has standards and won't pull tricks other schools do such as putting nAtive English speakers in for an English as a Foreign Language qualification purely so the kids get points/ a qualification.

Surely if this is what other schools are doing Ofsted would pick up on this?

Gaming the system is still rife. We were praised for not doing it as much as others butstillshite

Absolutely correct. The whole system is corrupt to the very core. The stats are totally and utterly without meaning. most schools with good league table positions have cheated and faked, and most people know this. Ofsted ratings are pretty much random.

Gosh I thought that gaming had pretty much died out with the new specs, eg less double entry, IGCSEs etc. Just shows how little I know!! We don't do anything game-y at my school (maybe we should!)

I'm in school with excellent stats. These are acquired by:

*artifically lowering the baseline data, the standards that children arrive with,

*forcing children through several different English GCSE qualifications and taking their best grade for progress 8, even when the children's time would be better spent on something else.

• cheating in coursework, dictating controlled assessments to children, giving children the mark scheme etc.

*turning a blind eye to children cheating blatantly in GCSE exams, for example pretending not to notice answers being looked up on phones in the exam hall.

• entering as many children as possible in second language exams in their first language

*only putting children forward for expulsion if they are under acheiving academically, no matter what their behaviour is like.

• forcing children who are predicted U/G through exams because they can't get lower than their prediction, and a few might flukily get slightly higher, if there is a large multiple choice component.

• stopping the tape and correcting students in language exams.

I could go on!

Surely if this is what other schools are doing Ofsted would pick up on this?

no, why would they? they have caused a climate of fear, where schools have to do anything and everything to tick ofsted boxes, at the expense of education, on pain of loss of livlihood.

I'd rther put my child in a school in special measures than an outstanding school. The last school I was in to be judged "outstanding" was awful, violence was rife, children's results faked all over the place. The only "outstanding" aspect of the school was the PR job the head was doing. ( This including removing scene-of-crime tape from school premises)

I would say, IME, that 'gaming' the system is insufficiently common, and insufficient in nature, to invalidate the system entirely - and insufficient to drop a 'school that is doing everything by the book' into Special Measures if it is 'actually a good school'.

I would say that some gaming - e.g. allowing a pupil to retake a piece of coursework, or offering verbal feedback on it - does occur, at the margins, and has a marginal effect.

However I would say that it is not that 'schools with good results / league table positions have faked them all and schools in low positions are honest' - overall, it is probably at the same relatively low level across virtually all schools (though the pressure to adjust is much higher in schools with low results and in vulnerable positions) and therefore has very little actual effect, if that makes sense?

User, the first at least is not possible. Baseline data in a secondary is primary SATs results - internal data has no validity whatever in terms of progress measures. I am afraid that your misunderstanding of that makes me view the remainder of your list with a pinch of salt.

Ah, sorry, it is THAT user again.

User, I know that you say you have worked in a very large number of schools over a long and unusually varied career. Have any of them, in your opinion, been good?

Baseline data in a secondary is primary SATs results LOTS of students come without primary SATs grades, enough to make a big difference if they are all estimated at well below where they actually are.

Have any of them, in your opinion, been good? my last school was very good, and the one two before that was exceptionally good, although ofsted failed it twice.

Progress8 scores do not include children who have no SATs scores.

See p19 of this

So a school cannot manipulate its Progress8 by giving such children artificially low starting points - they are simply not counted in the stats.

yes they are, in some classes it will be half of the class or more.

To quote the relevant part of the document can't linked to:

"There will be some pupils (those arriving at secondary school from the independent sector or abroad) who have no key stage 2 results to use as the baseline for the Progress 8 measure. These pupils’ scores will not be included in the Progress 8 measure (and the pupils will not be included in the denominator when calculating the average of the progress scores for the school)."

I don't think it's worth getting hung up on whether the school is refusing to game the Progress 8 scores, it's unlikely that they will have been put into SM on this alone. I would be more concerned about the SLT's refusal to take any of the Ofsted report on board and spend their time appealing the findings, rather than concentrating on making the required improvements

What were the other areas that were below standards, other than results and progress?

Surely if this is what other schools are doing Ofsted would pick up on this?

Yes, they would. They're also on the look out for schools that enter the whole of Y11 for ECDL.

That user is still teaching at a school that does CAs, apparently. CW is just about plausible if it's a school doing IGCSE.

I'm not sure what mark schemes are being given out that could possibly be inappropriate. Perhaps user14 means that schools are sharing the assessment criteria for tasks set?

I would be concerned about students with mobile phones in the examination hall. User14 has claimed elsewhere to be 'running' public exams, so if this is happening on her watch, it's really worrying.

Lots of 'gaming' goes on. So much so OFSTED released a statement recently telling schools not to do it because it harms the childrens progress. However I think the only difference it makes is really only 1 drop/gain in the rating.

Ofsted is no longer rated by a significant number of parents/teachers. I dont rate anything they write about schools. What they wrote in our schools inspection report genuinely looked like they'd gone to the wrong school. It bore very little resemblance to whats actually experienced.

"They're also on the look out for schools that enter the whole of Y11 for ECDL."

I have no problem with Ofsted looking for that but I don't like the idea that doing so is automatically seen as a bad thing - I spoke to a local head who used to only enter those not doing ICT but as GCSE ICT is no more they will now enter all the students (even if ECDL doesn't count in the league tables any more) because they think that it is a valuable qualification.

PiXL club recommend entering all Y11s for ECDL because it counts as a full GCSE and takes maybe a week to get through. Any head saying that they enter everyone because it's a valuable qualification is having a laugh.

It counts in the league tables this year, it won't next year because it's shit.

Our head dropped the ECDL course earlier in the year when he found out it wouldn't count towards the league tables. They moved the students onto another course mid year, the parents were livid at changing the course half way through. Perfect example of gaming there.

I only run the SEN exam rooms, not the main exam hall. Cheating in exams certainly happens, too many students have boasted of it to me for them all to be lying.

As to SATS scores being used for progress 8, these scores can and are faked, its easy and not uncommon.

Cheating and faking is rife throughout. I don't beleive any teacher who says they are unaware of it. Maybe a few, wondering around with tightly closed eyes and their hands over their ears, but most must be very well aware. I know of a few teachers who refuse to participate in it, but none who are not aware that is is happening.

BUT even if the scores are all spot on, perfect, accurate and exactly what they claim to be, they are still invalid.

Look at the way they are calculated, they have absolutely no statistical validity what so ever. You would have to take a SEVEN YEAR AVERAGE to come to a number that would be acceptable as meaningful in any sense.

So A. Numbers are NOT real. and B if numbers WERE real ( which they are not) would still be meaningless.

Well that's really interesting that people seem to agree. I had no idea!

Who on earth is running the main examination hall, & not docking phones before students come in?

I'll give you a clue: in the UK, it shouldn't be teachers.

Which courses are you running which include controlled assessments?

its not teachers, its external invigilators. No teachers invigilate at all. courses which have done CAs in the last few months. Geography, DT, science. maybe others, but those I have seen.

Why would external invigilators permit cheating?

They have no vested interest in results whatsoever.

Nor does your Exams Officer, who is supervising the external invigilators, right?

Why would any of these people be risking their jobs to encourage blatant cheating? What possible benefit could they gain from this?