Can someone please explain progress 8 scores to me?

[PalindromemordnilaP]

I get that progress 8 is supposed to be a measure of value added, but how is it actually calculated and what do the numbers actually mean?

If it's a comparison between year 6 SATs results and GCSEs how does that work for a cohort of children who will all have received a high SATs score (as you might expect in a super selective school)? Surely, the prediction for those that achieve the highest SATs scores will be to achieve the highest GCSE results, so how will the school 'add value' in a numerical sense as, no matter how well they teach the child, they can't make them get higher than the top grade?

How do they predict, based on SATS results in English and Maths, how children will perform across a range of GCSEs?

What difference in progress 8 score is significant? So, if one school was a grammar and had 0.3 as the progress 8, but had very high grades, but the comp had a progress 8 of 0.58 and lower overall grades, is the comp actually adding more value than the grammar?

Surely, the prediction for those that achieve the highest SATs scores will be to achieve the highest GCSE results

It's not a prediction. It is a comparison of how children who achieved the same SATs scores did on average. It's a live comparison for that cohort for that year. Clearly, some pupils with the highest SATs scores will not achieve the highest GCSE results so there is opportunity to do better than the average, although you are right that there is less scope to smash it at the higher end.

I'm not sure how the calculations were done this year as it is the first time that the new KS2 SATs scaled scores have been used.

How do they predict, based on SATS results in English and Maths, how children will perform across a range of GCSEs?

As I said, they don't predict, but look at how they actually did. There are requirements for certain types of GCSE to have been taken to count in the measure.

So, if one school was a grammar and had 0.3 as the progress 8, but had very high grades, but the comp had a progress 8 of 0.58 and lower overall grades, is the comp actually adding more value than the grammar?

Not necessarily, as the scores come with confidence intervals that could mean that the grammar actually added more value than the comp, despite the headline numbers. That said, people should be very wary of making comparisons this year as each school faced very different circumstances during covid that would have affected outcomes that were not within control of the school.

Thank you.

That's very helpful. I had foolishly thought it was based on a prediction.

@PalindromemordnilaP see this Good Schools Guide explanation of the Attainment 8 and Progress 8 accountability measures: www.google.com/amp/s/www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/curricula-and-exams/progress-8-attainment-8/amp

@PalindromemordnilaP you can drill down into the school statistics using the .gov website so you can see progress 8 across the different abilities like low or middle ability.

www.find-school-performance-data.service.gov.uk/

I might be teaching you to suck eggs but find the school, mine is just listed as a secondary, on the main page you get the progress 8 score for the whole cohort together, then click into Results by Pupil Characteristics, and then Prior Attainment which will show the progress 8 plus maths and English at grades 4 and 5. My child was a high prior attainment and I wanted to make sure the schools we were looking at pushed the higher achievers too.

Thank you.

So...

School A, grammar school:

Progress 8 overall = 0.08
98% grade 5 or above English & Maths
31 middle ability pupils, P8 0.5, 94% English & Maths grade 5+
143 high ability pupils, P8 -0.01, 99% English & Maths grade 5+

School B, comp school:

Progress 8 overall = -0.3
47% grade 5 or above English & Maths
96 low ability pupils, P8 -0.62, 11% English & Maths grade 5+
163 middle ability pupils, P8 -0.22, 57% English & Maths grade 5+
36 high ability pupils, P8 0.22, 94% English & Maths grade 5+

The comps results are lower this year than they were in 2019.
Both schools are Ofsted outstanding, the comp last inspected 2013, the grammar last inspected in 2011.

We were dead set on the grammar, but now that none of DD's friends scored high enough in the 11+, we've been having second thoughts. Then I spotted that the P8 for high ability pupils was higher in the comp, although not by much. In 2019 the P8 for high ability pupils was even higher in the comp.

Should I be giving the P8s much weight in the decision making process?

If you’re in aGrammar area, are the Comps actually fully comprehensive with the full range of ability or are they secondary moderns?

The stats for high ability children of school B only numbering 36 might suggest it’s a full Grammar area (Bucks? Kent?) and there are no true Comps, only Grammars and Secondary Moderns or High schools as they are sometimes called by some areas.

I’d also look at the Attainent 8 figures for the 2 schools. Look at the average grade and score for the different ability groups. In a Grammar, you’d expect all to get Eng and Maths at 5+ but what you should be interested in too, is attainment 8 figures as a selective school should be delivering lots of 7-9 grades and not just scraping passes at L5. How different are the A8 scores for high abilities within the 2 schools?

And lastly, absolutely dint be swayed by where their friends are going. At secondary, kids meet lots of new people and make new friends. At this point in Yr6 being with old friends might feel important and not being with many they know seem scary, but honestly, it won’t be an issue and you’d be mad to turn down a more suitable school (if the Grammar is more suitable….it might not be, but if they have passed the 11+ without heaps of tutoring, it probably will suit them well) because of wobbles over friendship.

Especially if you live in a fully selective area, although progress scores are important, you need to know that grammars and secondary moderns. An be very different.

Think about how many languages and the choices offered and the availability of single sciences in the secondary modern. You might also consider too what options might be available for 6th Form.

I know one shouldn't get fixated on the statistics, but the low P8 score of 0.08 for this grammar (School A) jumped out at me a bit, because all of our local grammars in my local area (Birmingham/Walsall) have significantly higher P8 scores than that, ranging from 0.48 to 0.86 over the 11 schools I checked.

I know that the impact of Covid has affected schools in different ways, but I would want to find out why this grammar school appears to have added so little value.

How would one find that out @LetItGoToRuin ?

If you search for school performance data on the below link, it comes up with the warning I've copied below. This warning recommends asking the schools directly, which might be quite awkward!

It might be worth trying to find a bit more data before you do that though - are there any other grammars in the region? (although it recommends not comparing between schools...)

www.find-school-performance-data.service.gov.uk/find-a-school-in-england

"Uneven impact of the pandemic on 2021/22 school and college performance data
We recommend:
Not making direct comparisons with data from previous years or between schools or colleges.
Discussing with the school or college factors that may have influenced these results and consider a range of information when forming a view on how well a school or college is doing, including pupil/student population information."

I think the grammer's P8 would concern me too. Surely the point of schools like this is that they add value? Dd1's grammer has 175 high ability students and a P8 of 0.6. DD2's likely to be going to the local comp which has a similar footprint to your school B.

The fact there P8 for the middle ability is so much higher would make me think they're concentrating on getting the 4s up to 5s and 6s rather than the 7s up to 8s and 9s if that makes sense?

Were there other things that you liked about one or the other? DD1's grammer has better art and music than the comp for example. Also one is mixed and one is single sex. I wouldn't put too much store by her friends, but maybe the journey would make a difference.

How did you find the latest P8 scores I am having difficulty locating them?

@Violashift

If you go on the website mentioned above - the 'findaschool' then you can look up P8 for each school.

I know my son's superselective grammar Progress 8 score was appalling this year - because they discounted the 40 ish children who took Maths GCSE early, even though they all got nines...

And as someone with four children in grammar schools, two of whom have 'taken' public exams over the last 3 years, I would take any stats based on Covid years with a HUGE pinch of salt.

I also agree with the poster above who said not to base a school choice on friendships - they change so much at secondary - choose the best school for your child.

I can't say I have much sympathy for a school that decided to 'early enter' a large group of children for a GCSE during a year in which exams were cancelled, instead of allowing them to sit an actual exam during the year they were scheduled to sit an exam.

We know that grades were massively inflated that year, and therefore allowing results from 2021 to be included in measures for 2022 would have skewed things in favour of schools that decided to do teacher assessment instead of exams.

But this sort of thing is why the progress 8 pages contain caveats saying you need to ask the school to explain the context of their score.

Fair point, but they've done it that way for years as the early takers then do Ad Maths in Y11. They always get 100% of the early takers getting a top grade as they only enter the children if they know they are going to get a 9 (or an A* in previous years).

My point was that choosing a school purely on stats or Ofsted reports isn't a good strategy (IMO).

I think that the numbers given for Progress 8 actually mean something… +1 means that a child got roughly one grade higher in each of their 8 subjects than their KS 2 results suggest. The caveat is than English and maths are double weighted.

This is my understanding from reading the methodology. I’d be interested to know if others agree with this.

I think it is ...
+1 means that a child got roughly one grade higher in each of their 8 subjects than their KS 2 results suggest the national average for children who got the same KS2 results as they did.

You should also look at context though. Some of my students take courses that don’t count towards P8 because they are the best courses for the individual pupils. Others take fewer GCSEs because they require specific SEND interventions. For P8 purposes they score zero and this skews the results across the cohort depending how many individuals this applies to in the given year.