The league tables are out - let's talk Progress 8

[noblegiraffe]

The secondary league tables were published this week:

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/schools-by-type?step=default&table=schools&for=secondary

Some schools at the top have fab progress 8. Harris Battersea has done amazingly with 80% PP

I saw on Twitter this interesting breakdown of Progress 8 by type of student. Girls make more progress than boys, students with EAL make more progress than those who have English as a first language. Disadvantaged pupils make less progress, students with SEN even less.
When you look at the league tables, you then notice at the top several girls schools, and London schools with a high proportion of EAL.

Is progress 8 really a measure of progress, or a measure of school intake? Does a student being EAL outweigh them being disadvantaged?

And why are boys doing so much worse than girls?

I find these tables deeply unhelpful. Parents desperately need clear and useful information about schools and this isn't it. I contacted the head of DS1's school when their provisional progress 8 score was published as it was below 0 and worse than last year.

I learned so much about how the score is calculated and importantly what it excludes (which in the case of DS1's school is very relevant).

A school can't be boiled down to a number in this relentless government quest to measure and test. No wonder so many teachers are leaving.

Cross posts with MultiVac but I agree completely.

The school I teach at on P8 comes put as nearly the worst in the LA. But it remains the one all the parents scrap to get their DCs in to.

"Our local, superselective boys' grammar has a 'below average' P8 listing for this year."
it is rather typical of that particular school that they are outraged the system wasn't tweaked for its benefit......

Ha - are they! That's very amusing...

"'This year, there were more points to be gained by getting from an A to an A* (1.5) than from an F to an E (0.5 I think)'

How is that not biased? Why was it changed?"
It is biased. And makes life much more difficult for high schools in grammar areas.

The Mirror excelled itself with its league tables reporting this year....

That mirror article is outrageous and has caused all sorts of drama with our parents this week on social media.

'Oh, and noble - it's quite possible that at least one reason boys do so much worse than girls using these measures has to do with handwriting bias....'

Do children lose marks for scruffy handwriting at GCSE?

Did it affect your OFSTED Piggy? I'm interested to see how P8 plays out in inspections where there is low P8 but high Att8.

And vice versa.

Whole other thread about it at the mo jammy of you are interested. I think there is an acceptance that examiners can prejudge, as teachers often do, too... it's very hard no to. Most, but not all, poor handwriting does belong o boys. Apparently, a girl gets very reprimanded for poor presentation, though, whereas, in a boy , it gets more 'accepted'. Which isn't very helpful...

Yes it definitely did Madonna !

On a slight schadenfreude note, there are lots of the government's beloved UTCs on the Mirror's hateful list.

Ah, yes, who is excluded:

Everyone without a KS2 result.

So anyone at a private primary [over 25% at some grammars], anyone moving from abroad......

IGCSEs in subjects other than Maths and English did count this year. And the more points for moving an A to an A* than an F to an E will not work next year, because the vast majority of GCSEs are now reformed (9-1).

Comps in the same town as our grammars(seaside town,in lowest 20% for deprivation)have done well( average,1 higher than average). Both grammar schools boys and girls single sex are above average progress 8.One comp in the same town with higher than average fsm scored 1 point higher in progress 8 than the highest scoring grammar.

Further away in our main city the comp with the higher number of fsm has done really well scoring higher than all the more popular comps with less.

Can you really put much stock in intake as regards progress 8. Life away from London is completely different,surely you can't judge a whole table from the top schools of which most will be in London or the Home Counties. The rest of the country is very different.

Having seen this thread I've just looked at our local school for updated information

There is none.

Why wouldn't the progress 8 breakdown be published?

Do you think it will have a knock on effect on reputation Piggy? I wonder how much weight parents place on P8.

And I hope it wasn't a drastic drop down the grading and you aren't facing the pressures that brings.

What was interesting was that the definition of 'average' moved, in a way I wasn't expecting. The reporting at prior attainment level is subtle enough to compensate for the fact that lower prior attainers have higher P8 in general, so the 'numerical P8' which got the school 'average' for lower attainers was significantly higher than the P8 that got them 'above average' for the higher attainers.

If this is the same as the primary figures, then this is to do with confidence intervals. The main figure given is the mean, but there’s also a confidence interval. If that stretches across zero then the result is average. If both boundaries of the confidence interval are above 0 then the result will be above/well above average. And below/well below for a confidence interval where both boundaries are below zero.

No Madonna we went to good . So this puts us with every other single school for a bout a 40 mile radius! It is too early to say whether it will affect us. the local feeder school is now an RI so that may have more impact in this area of ridiculous house prices.

The LA is in the bottom something % of some sort of results ... we're a bit meh al round! I went over the border to another county for an interview last year and I couldn't believe how much more modern and thrusting it all seemed!

Phew. Was a bit worried it would be RI from your emphatic response!

No, thankfully! But they were told there was no way we could keep our Outstanding.

Oooh, thanks Rafa! That makes sense. So the different figures that fall within the 'average' range for the sub-groups will also be to do with the confidence intervals of those.

Does it also mean that a higher 'absolute' figure can be 'average' (if the cohort size is very small and results scattered, so confidence interval wide) while a lower one with a smaller confidence interval be 'Above average'?