What questions to discern the reality of a school?

[KleineDracheKokosnuss]

looking ahead to secondary open days, and noting the articles this weekend about how there are hardly any subject specialist teachers available to teach classes - what would you ask to try and identify whether your local secondary is affected and how badly?

How would you need to phrase the question to achieve a useful answer? Would a question about “how many classes are taught by a permanent subject specialist work”? How can we phrase “how Often do the kids get chucked in the hall and told to work from textbooks while a warm body keeps watch?”

It isn't the be all and end all, but it is a helpful measure to look at alongside other information
This.

If a school has an awful progress 8, alongside other measures, it's probably not a good sign. I'm not in a grammar area so selective schools don't really feature to me.

Having an excellent progress 8 doesn't tell you much at all. In the cases of some schools I know of it means that they managed move their challenging students out by the end of Year 9/10, or they run a school in such a way that many parents pull their children with SEN out, or they focus on getting high attainment from low prior attainers to get a high P8 score but the progress for more able children isn't very good, or they narrow the curriculum, or the rely heavily on the open bucket element to disguise the fact that a lot of children are missing a humanities or MFL.

I'd rather send DC to a school with an average to good P8 score, a broad curriculum and good pastoral care than send them to a so called high performing school that gets their high P8 by not educating the whole cohort effectively.

My advice - go onto the website and the newsletters/letters home. Gives you a great feel for how hard-line the school is on some things and how they really tend to view parents. Likewise social media feeds...

We've got a few schools near us - one has just put their leavers arrangements letter up on their website - it's 4 pages of rules, reiterations of impeccable uniform which will be inspected before students are allowed to enter their leavers' assembly and students will be sent to isolation if there are any uniform infringements etc (and the usual half a page of fucking logos at the bottom of the letterhead) versus another which is "you're on the last lap for exams, those of you still having to come in for them - you can come in non-uniform as long as it's acceptable for school because you guys have earnt it"

Gives you a fair picture of which school you might choose as the destination for your child. For ours - we've avoided the previously outstanding (recently downgraded and only just scraped a good) 4 page letter which is all shiny and new but would be completely the wrong place for our kids, and gone for the tatty (due to be rebuilt completely) one where they've relaxed the uniform and keep encouraging the remaining exam students on social media each day... on open evening I made a point of listening out for how the staff were interacting with the current student helpers and really liked the rapport they had and how they were chatting about individual interests between "can you just take this family over to Mr Smith's Maths classroom".

I also was looking for SEN setups - asked informally around a range of local SEN parent groups and one school had very little positive said about it, the other had a lot of comments about the SENCo being very good, adjustments being actually put into place and not just sitting on a paper document that was periodically rubber stamped and things like supports for those who struggle with the unstructured times of the day like breaktimes in terms of the SEN base being open for them... the times when I know my child might well struggle and need a safe bolthole to go into.

@LolaSmiles Exactly. Progress 8 is collected from the students on roll as of Jan of Y11. Not unheard of to off-roll difficult students to alternative provision or make SEN students lives hell to the point the provision breaks down.
Your open bucket point is actually mentioned in the Ofsted blog I linked in my last post.
I wholeheartedly agree with your last paragraph.

ms Foxes I keep copying pasting you information from Google including screenshots. It is rather illogical to say that I didn't bother to use google. I am very open to correcting me as I may be wrong but reluctant to be accept offending me because of that.

It looks like you are well informed about it. Please explain to me without taking it personally as the other people in conversation; as it is not personal at all and I don't mean to undermine anybody's authority here:

If the image from Wikipedia is based on truth, how they bucket additional subjects as they don't have KS2 comparison reference in SATs: English and Maths? This is what I don't understand.

@Foxesandsquirrels

What is meant by collected? I read as per wikipedia that it is comparison of SATs records and GCSE records for English and Math. Records of results.

( Please do not take anything I say personally as it is not my intention to insult you and I would appreciate if hou could reciprocate it. I am merely trying to understand it)

Progress 8 does use KS2 SATs in Maths and English. However, comparisons are made against 8 GCSE (or equivalent) subjects (Maths and English, 3 EBacc subjects, 3 open approved subjects/qualifications. Maths is double weighted, English is double weighted if pupils sit both lit and lang)

If you click on the ‘i’ next to Progress 8 on any secondary school’s page on the government’s school performance data site you will see an explanation. It states:
“This score shows how much progress pupils at this school made between the end of key stage 2 and the end of key stage 4, compared to pupils across England who got similar results at the end of key stage 2. This is based on results in up to 8 qualifications, which include English, maths, 3 English Baccalaureate qualifications including sciences, computer science, history, geography and languages, and 3 other additional approved qualifications.

You might find this guidance document useful, too.

RedFluffyPanda
Progress 8 captures the academic journey of pupils between Y6 (captured by SATs) and the end of Y11 (captured by GCSEs and other eligible level 2 qualifications).

If a school has some challenging pupils then as long as the students leave the school by some mechanism, legal or otherwise, then those pupils won't count for the school's Progress 8 score.

On its own it doesn't tell you very much.

For example:
School A might be in an area with strong feeder primary schools and a lot of children achieve greater depth at year 6. This means those children can make expected progress, score highly at GCSE But the school wouldn't necessarily have a high progress 8 score. It would probably be a positive score that's average-just above average.

School B might take a lot of lower attaining students from Y6, so to make expected progress those pupils don't have to score as highly at GCSE. With careful gaming of the open bucket (a series of qualifications that don't count in the other buckets eg. English, maths, science, humanities etc) then School B might have a much higher score than School A, but offer a worse curriculum. If School B decides to nudge some parents that it's better to leave than risk their child being excluded, or makes life so difficult for pupils with SEN that parents find a new school, or they exclude students to PRUs/AP then that also gets rid of students who will bring their score downm

Further to the above.

Primary school C is good but takes a relaxed approach to SATs. A couple of practice papers, but no pressure. Children at school C are just as able as A but come out with lower SATs even though by Sep y7 they are at the same level again.

C feeds in to school Z whereas A feeds into X.
X and Z get identical GCSE results, but Z will have a better progress 8 score.

Although the starting point just measures English and Maths and not say Art ability or PE ability, it isn't an overall bad starting point as so many subjects require literacy and/or numeracy ability, and it is on a cohort basis anyway.

I linked an Ofsted blog that illustrated this with a picture diagram. Many posters have also explained this. I don't mean to be rude, but you come across like you don't want to understand this and you're spamming me with replies when I've said I don't want to engage with you any longer. I really don't understand what's so difficult. It's been spelt out. Your results in maths and English at KS2 are used to predict what you should be getting in the general humanities and sciences. This is spelt out in most of the articles I and other posters have sent.

The Wikipedia article also explains this. Just carry on reading.

Taken from the Wikipedia article you screenshot:

The Progress 8 benchmark is an accountability measure used by the government of the United Kingdom to measure the effectiveness of secondary schools in England. It bands pupils into groups based on their scores in English and mathematics during the Key Stage 2 SATs. In GCSE results, six EBacc subjects are chosen and each grade is converted to points on an arbitrary scale published by the government for that cohort. English and mathematics are worth double points and all points are added together. This is also known as the Attainment 8 score.

There is an expected point score determined for each band of children, and the school is then ranked based on how their pupils' Attainment 8 compares with the expected score.[1]

Progress 8 scores will result in a school being placed into a banded category: well above average, above average, average, below average and well below average.[2]

So, very clearly, the KS2 results band people into groups.

@TeenDivided Excellent examples.

@ThomasWasTortured

Looked at page 23. They don't say what do they use to capture the data for 3 English Baccalaureate qualifications including sciences, computer science, history, geography and languages, at KS2 level which suppose to be the lower end reference point in (results beginning KS4) -(results end KS2)= Progress8

As there are no grades in KS2 they surely must be doing some assesment at the beginning of KS3, don't they, to have the lower end reference point? Maybe I am overcomplicating it

@RedFluffyPanda progress 8 compares the performance of students from KS2 to ks4. It uses the maths and English scores at KS2 then looks at what students with similar KS2 scores got in their GCSEs for other subjects. It then creates an average progress from this statistically. So yes, art GCSE progress is based on maths and English at KS2! Progress 8 is then a combination of progress on English x2 , maths x2, 2 subjects from the ebacc list and then 2 other subjects.

Your results in maths and English at KS2 are used to predict what you should be getting in the general humanities and sciences.

ah that is interesting. So SATS is not in fact only English and Maths but under that name are also sciences. That may be the answer to my question what do they base it kn

I don't mean to be rude, but you come across like you don't want to understand this and you're spamming me with replies when I've said I don't want to engage with you any longer

On the contrary, I so wish to understand it. I have not completed primary and secondary education in UK and I am not a native English speaker and it is all new to me hence I am trying to understand. Yes I am vocal and I am profusely apologising for spamming if you see it like that. Please remember about the fact thay you don't need to answer
All the best

No they don't.

They use KS2 SATs in English and Maths as the lower score.

They use the 8 buckets of GCSEs selected according to rules as the uppeer score, and compare them.

they do not compare individual subjects.

The basic premise which in my view is not unreasonable, is that ability at 11 in English and Maths gives a reasonable cohort expectation of GCSE results, especially as the GCSEs results they measure include Maths, double weighted, English double weighted, and some form of science.

@RedFluffyPanda No, SATS are only English and Maths. Sometimes science if the school gets chosen as a sample. If that happens, that's not included in the progress 8 anyway. It is only English and Maths that's used from KS2 sats. @handmademitlove explains it well.

@handmademitlove thank you! A bit clearer about that science part:)

You have completely misunderstood it. Data from KS2 doesn’t include anything but English and Maths, it doesn’t need anything else. It is the KS4 data that is compared against that includes other subjects. No data from KS3 is used.

The worked example in Annex A in my link explains how it is worked out.

It gives the example of a pupil who who achieved 7, 7, 8, 6, 5, 6, 6, 8. With the 7s being double weighted that gives an attainment 8 score of 67.

Her KS2 scaled score was 110. The average GCSE attainment 8 score for all pupils with this prior attainment is 61.57.

(67 - 61.57) / 10 = 0.54. 0.54 is the pupil’s individual progress 8 score.

(results beginning KS4) -(results end KS2)= Progress8

This isn’t how it works

It is 3 subjects, not 2.

Got it now Thomas. Thank you. :)

@ThomasWasTortured I'm sort of glad someone is sharing my frustration 😅 I don't think that poster reads past the first couple of lines of the links. I'm going to hop off this thread now as it's making me quite annoyed! Thank you for helping out.

@Foxesandsquirrels Have a lovely day and bless you too

Apologies - that should be 3 ebacc subjects and 3 other subjects

@RedFluffyPanda

Academies don't even have to follow the National Curriculum, most do but they don't have to.
https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school/academies

The Ebacc subjects are

English (Lang and Lit)
Maths
Science (usually 2 or 3 occasionally 4)
History or Geography
A modern language (sometimes 2)

So if your child is timetabled for the ebacc subjects they have 6 buckets filled. RE is the only compulsory subject in English schools so most schools think you might as well take a GCSE if you have to study it.

So that's 7 buckets full, leaving your child with one choice for their 8th subject.

Now your child might be taking 10 subjects so they have a choice of 3 'options' but only 1 will contribute to the school's progress 8.

A school concerned with their P8 will put most resources in to the ebacc subjects and fewer in to the 'open' qualification.

Definitiely ask each teacher you see how long they have been there and how much turnover there has been in the dept they teach in. Ask how many classes have had to be covered this year with non-specialists or cover.

I’m sorry, but you will probably find shocking answers from pretty much every school you visit. There are serious problems. All the great facilities and timetables and pastoral care etc can’t compensate for a lack of stable and appropriately qualified and skilled staff.

Ask the kids who take you round, how often they have a cover teacher and if they have had the same teacher through the school year.