Progress 8, attainment 8, what stats matter?

[Stokey]

Hope someone can give me some guidance and what stats are the important ones when considering secondary school. We have one "outstanding" girls state school and two "good" mixed comps to choose from. The girls school stats are way better than the other two but DD2 has expressed a preference for mixed.

School A has better progress 8 scores and B has better attainment 8 scores. This is all made slightly more tricky by the fact that the '22 data is still being confirmed so gov.uk stats are for 2019 when A did rather badly. It has since had a new head and seems to be on the up, and DD2 really liked it despite B being the favoured choice for most of her school mates (who aren't going girls).

What other things should I be looking for? I'm hoping to visit both for day time visits but not sure what I should focus on. DD2 is reasonably academic, top third of class, but does get easily distracted, no SEN which school B excels in.

The stats should also give you progress 8 for different ability groups. So for example a school near me had good progress scores fir low ability groups but shockingly bad for mid and high ability children.

so if you have a high ability child you need a school that will push that child to the best of their ability. However some schools with high attainment 8 figures just happen to have a high ability cohort who are not actually making the expected progress.

Attainment 8 gives you the average GCSE score (out of 8 subjects) - English and maths are double-weighted, and at least three more of the subjects included have to be more academic ones (and if they do more than eight some will be disregarded). So that compares how well the pupils do overall.

Progress 8 takes each pupil's attainment 8 score and compares it to other children with similar prior attainment; their individual progress 8 score will be based on the difference between their score and the average in that set of pupils. That's then averaged across all pupils. A score of 0.5 suggests that the pupils do on average half a grade better than might be expected.

From what you say, B's intake isn't as strong, so they don't do as well as A's pupils, but the "value-added" may be better.

If you click on the progress 8 question mark in the league tables, you get a "confidence interval". Because the score is based on one particular cohort, it may be higher or lower just because it was a better or worse than average year group. The confidence interval indicates that it's likely that the "true" value is within that range. You might find that although one school scored 0.4 and another 0.6, there's actually substantial overlap in the confidence intervals, in which case it's less certain that the 0.6 one is better.

You need to look at percentages of low, middle and high attainers. Where does your DD fit in? If higher, does this cohort make good progress? What about attainment? Will DD have enough bright DC to work with?

What is their attendance stats? Do they vary? What about exclusion rates? What are the size of the 6th forms? What % go to a good university? Are Dc ambitious? How do the schools compare with national data?

Look at their newsletters. Full of info or full of rules?

Thanks all, this is really helpful information. In all three schools, the higher ability groups make the least progress, but is that generally the case? None of them have 6th forms. The girls school is well above the national average for P8, but the middle cohort is making the most progress, while the other two are both average. I'll look at attendance and exclusion. We do live in an area of reasonable deprivation, both school A & B have around 40% pupils on FSM and similar with ESL.

@Stokey
No. Often the higher attainers make more progress. Certainly where I live, most schools have this profile. I’ve checked several and in all, the highest do better. They do make up in excess of 30% of the intake though. We are county grammars and obviously their intake is all higher achievers. However, guess which schools have the best progress 8? Yes. The grammars. I also looked at the worst secondary I could think of. Their figures are negative and the high achievers lose out the most! So if your child is a high achiever, it matters where they go!

How much difference is there really in the figures? If you are comparing say 0.2 with 0.4 I really wouldn't worry.
I would concentrate more on other factors

• ethos
• pastoral care
• level of homework
• extra curricular
• behaviour

(Also these days I might look into their LGBTQAI+ views and whether they align with yours. When I looked for my DDs it wasn't an issue but dealing with self harm was.)

It depends if high mquality teaching matters and if your sc is in the higher attainers group. The number of higher attainers matters. They should be able to improve them more rapidly than other dc. Especially lower attainers Yes, others things batter but some are “what if” scenarios. Homework is in their policy. Clubs should be easy to discover, but they change. As do Hess and ethos. It might become super strict with a new head!