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?

Are you still a governor BertrandRussell?

The ones who generally do well and have a very mixed intake have progress 8 of 0,0.1 and 0.2. Interestingly the one with 0.2 has the lowest attainment 8 of the 3! (Why?!)

Maybe they allow pupils to do subjects they are good at rather than forcing them down the science route.

Art, Drama and other creative subjects only count in the last 'buckets'.

Thanks for explanation above answering my questions.

I asked because the school with highest P8 has biggest intake. Wondered if and how that affect A8 - because looking at % of low/middle/high achievers all schools seem quite similar.

Also asked about 2 schools that had dropped because I know something about the 2 and changes recently. Both have had new heads, both become very image focussed and both have a high level of Managed moves (out of there!). Both also have bullying (as does any school - but neither admit to it or deal with it).
I was wondering if this could have an affect on achievement or if the results and this happen to be coincidence iyswim?

If the kids being managed-moved out are disadvantaged boys with SEN then that would most likely have a positive effect on both attainment 8 and progress 8.

"Are you still a governor BertrandRussell?"

No - I wish I was.

I know noble - ds was one of them
His Sen all but disappeared apparently - but it was more about making things so hard (bullying me) I'd agree to move him in the end. He's not disadvantaged though in the school sense of discription.
He's now in a lovely supportive MS setting with an EHCP who don't focus on the fact he'll fuck up there league tables - but on what he needs to do the best he can.
The school he left have continuously driven Sen students out - or students that are being bullied if they are low achievers. They recently tried to exclude a pupil with a FT 1:1 EHCP for having a meltdown in lesson - when there was no TA present because he didn't follow his behaviour plan - that states clearly needs to be adult led. They make parents remove their children by constantly playing these games and making it so they don't want their children there.
(You probably remember my story - I'm the one who's ds had a knife pulled on him).

Does this have a knock on effect for other secondaries - the ones who end up taking the low achievers and those with Sen? Because if it does then they are doing even better as the schools that take them are the only 3 locally who got average and above P8!

Sorry rambled on the kids being managed out are Sen and low achievers. So how come their progress and attainment 8 scores remain significantly lower than others and have dropped and yet the schools who take these pupils and support them remain average and above?

I know P8 isn't the be all and end all - like with ofsted reports! But there must be something informative about them regarding how the schools work and their ethos? Or is mine just anecdotal?

Re grammar schools: progress 8 isn't just calculated on Low/middle/high progress, but based on a fine score calculated from KS2 Maths and Reading results. Not all high attainers are equal, it would go from just scraped a 5 to off the scale clever, BUT attainment is capped at the top of level 5 (level 6 is completely ignored).

Grammar schools benefit from this because they are more likely to have high attainers who are level 6 or above at KS2, yet they would be recorded as top of level 5. The progress they have to make at GCSE to get to an A* is thus less than the progress a kid who got a genuine 5A would have to make, but they would be said to have made the same progress.
People say 'waaah, but attainment is capped at a grade A*/9' for grammar pupils so they can't demonstrate how far they push them' but that's true for everyone, where it is not true for every school that they're packed with level 6s recorded as level 5s.

I do remember your DS, you, glad to hear he's doing much better in his new school :)

The problem you're having (from what I understand) is trying to compare schools with P8 of -0.1, 0, 0.1 and 0.2.

Because of confidence intervals, there is no way to distinguish between these schools. The one with -0.1 could actually be better than the one with 0.2.

Schools are being ranked to the nearest 0.01, while confidence intervals seems to be about 0.5. So you have schools labelled "above average" ranked below schools which are "average"

Not trying to compare. (As such!)

The 3 schools 0-0.2 are known to always achieve just above NA for gcse results.
The 1 that's -0.1 is the one I said has made big improvements but always remains slightly below because of area/cohort. Those that want to do well do well there. But they continue to have a large amount of disadvantaged pupils who can't be engaged (no parental support either) who will always affect their results.

The other 2 schools are -0.3 and -0.4 having both been above average and were above the other schools last year.

I'm happy with school ds is at. It's the one with P8 of 0. My catchment is one of P8 -0.1 but due to ds needs he wouldn't cope in their environment and the school with 0.2 has a very large intake and would have been too big for him. The other school is too far away and difficult to get to due to location.

Tbh there's no real reason for my interest but I'm very interested in education and providing an environment that nurtures all. I've lately been questioning whether image and public opinion of a school attracts people - because I was certainly drawn in by ds original schools talk about their amazing results and percentages of achievements for boys and Sen etc. Yet re reading data for past 5 years they've just managed to manipulate the data to say what they want it to.

Oh and get rid of the boys with Sen who would affect those results!

A different tool that shows much the same information but perhaps in an easier way to get to grips with:

assembly.education/benchmarking/