Performance league tables - what you should know

[thortfortheday]

I work at an excellent state comprehensive school where children thrive. In fact, children thrive at all the state comprehensive schools in my area. Most of the schools in my area get progress and attainment results that are well above average, yet I see people comparing them in a league table and making decisions based on whichever one is highest in the table that year.

What you need to know is that although attainment and progress results are averaged across a whole cohort they can be significantly skewed by a very small number of "outlier" students. Most schools have a handful of students who perform significantly below par, due to social or medical reasons outside of the school's control. It is usually related to persistent absence and, in some cases, school refusal.

You simply can't tell from the results whether schools are doing everything they can to help these students and keep them in school, or whether they are managing them out. But if they are in the former category, then their averaged results will definitely be impacted.

The outliers should arguably be excluded from the published results. There is a DfE process for requesting this, but the evidence bar is very high, relying on testimony from social workers. Unfortunately the chaos in the social care system makes this extremely difficult to obtain. The children may have had several different social workers over the relevant time period and there is absolutely no incentive for any social worker to spend time on the sort of detailed paperwork that is needed to satisfy the DfE - why should they care enough about any school's reported results to put in this time and effort?

The more students a school has in this category, the more their results will be affected. Schools with fewer may have a more affluent catchment, a more nurturing approach (to help keep them in school), or a less nurturing approach (to push them out). You simply can't tell. But, the good news is that the below-par performance of a handful of persistently absent children will make no difference whatsoever to the performance of your child in the same school. So go with your gut and choose the school you know your child will be happiest at, not the one that is slightly higher in the league table. 🙂

I see your point. I agree that probably the top 5% and bottom 5% should be excluded from the stats. I also agree that the difference between say +0.3 and +0.25 is irrelevant. However +0.3 to say -0.2 is more significant.

I'm glad they stopped the measures for the covid years as my DD would have been one of those screwing them up for her good school.

You shouldn't pick a school just based on league tables. But it is information to consider and if necessary ask about.

@TeenDivided the top 5% don't skew the results in the same way - in fact they are under-represented in the results because their attainment is naturally capped at a 9 and their progress is capped by the difference between their key stage 2 performance and a 9.

Another thing worth noting about results generally is that progress can only be measured for students that have key stage 2 results - if a secondary school has a lot of children from abroad or from private primaries, their results won't be counted. So published progress measures tell you nothing about how good a school is at educating children from anything other than the state primary sector.

We took no notice of league tables.

We live in what is classed as a deprived area, many friends bussed their children to the leafy comp a few miles away.

I would say some people worry about their children ‘catching common’ as well as league table results but they would never write that. DS schools results on the league tables overall are terrible but all the top set kids including him did very well. Confident and clever children that can get on with anyone can do well anywhere.

You just need to read MN to truly understand that getting on with people is just as much of an asset as being clever.

The leafy comp and DS dire school had the same drugs and bullying issues. The one difference was that two suicide attempts were made at the leafy comp on school premises.

That is why the Ofsted report also matters if it is recent. Also, there is a degree to which a few as you call them " outliners" can skew the results. If it is many of them then it is not a good educational enviroment as they will take a lot of resources. All metrics tell us something.

Fwiw, "outlier" is the official term, not my term. It's a statistical term.