What does this progress 8 score mean?

[36and3]

Other than I get they're doing well but what does it actually mean in layman's terms? It's our nearest school and most likely dd will get a place for September. It's an all girls though which does put us off. Otherwise oftsed outstanding for the past few inspections.

@bluddygud
It will be because they have few, if any, under-achievers

No they don't. Look at the gov website. The 2023 data shows that there was zero low attainers. 1 mid attainer and the rest are high attainers. Hardly a chance to make a huge progress.

Just did back of envelope and given the attainment score and progress score: 118/120 is the average SATs score for someone at Henrietta Barnet.

Your figures corroborate what I just said - there are few, if any, under-achievers.

There is plenty of room to make 'huge' progress - the more 9's the better.

@Rhayader

A child with a fantastic but less perfect SAT score of 117 would have an estimated score of 75.6. So actually all 9s would give them a progress of 1.44!

This sounds like a huge progress 8 whereas with 117 they could easily have 120 with more luck.
In my son's school, if one looks at the low mid and high attainer progress 8, one may see that the largest progress are making low attainers,- because that how the maths works if the school is good and is making effort

The casus of HB is strange to me they are all but all high attainers but one mid attainer

@bluddygud
There is plenty of room to make 'huge' progress - the more 9's the better.

I am sorry but I don't understand your statement
Progress 8 is a measure between achievement at SATs and GCSE.

If a girl attending HB got 120 out of 120 possible at math at SATs in 6, what progress did she make if she got 9 at Math at GCSE? None.

According to the DfE tables she made 0.8 progress.

I guess it’s to account for the fact that getting 120 is easier than getting all 9s (relatively)

If that is the case, Progress 8 is most bizzare measure. Tiffin Boys have zero low attainers 3 mid attainers and 159 high attainers. Their Progress 8 is 0.79 that is the same as Catholic school where my son attends. But there are many low performers in our school at much less high performers than at Tiffin

SATs consist of whole week of exams and are targeted at 10-11 yrs old. It is odd to compare both exams

Shows Tiffin Boys ain't all that then or your school is fantastic. Would be interesting to see their breakdown by prior attainment.

Grade 9s are generally awarded to less than 4% of the cohort per subject. I'm going to find out what percentage get a 120 in SATS.

your school is fantastic

It is if you take into consideration very good GCSE results and that there is no entrance exam.

Progress 8 is a measure against a live cohort, what their peers who got the same SATs results as them actually got, not what people think they should have got. So there are kids with 120 in their SATs who are not going on to get all 9s at GCSE meaning the kid who does go onto all 9s has made positive progress compared to them.

I just did another back of envelope calc and the average sat score of a boy at tiffin is 115.5 — so it’s a bit lower than Henrietta Barnet. Which makes sense because they get fewer applications (~1500) for more spaces (180).

HB is >2500 sitting the exam for 100 spaces

How do you work out progress 8? My daughter averaged 111 in SATS, but 8.1 APS for GCSEs.

You are misunderstanding the P8 score. You can google to see how it is calculated.

Firstly, it makes no sense to single out her KS2 maths score, because the KS2 prior attainment used in the P8 measure is an average of the scores for English and Maths. So, instead, let's assume she got 120 for both, so her P2 average is 120.

The KS4 measure is her Attainment 8, which is a max of 90.

Her individual P8 score is measured against all the other students in England who also got 120 in their SATs and who went to state secondary schools. So, if your example student got the maximum 90 for her A8, and every other 120-average student also got A8 of 90, then her P8 would be zero.

In practice, most will get less than 90 (and obviously none will get more than 90). Most of the high KS2 attainers will go to schools that aren't selective, and which vary in quality. Many will have family and social issues that reduce their grades.

Many will also go to private schools, which aren't included in the measure at all.

It varies each year - but roughly 111 is 60.63

is 8.1 her average gcse grade because it doesn’t work quite like that. English and maths both count twice then it’s 3 English baccalaureate subjects and 3 “open” subjects.

Maths element (x2) + English element (x2*) + 3 EBacc elements + 3 performance qualifications

But let’s just assume that’s the score for the calculation, her progress would be 2.0 :)

I suspect as I mentioned previously, that a sizeable proportion of Michaela students were only just acquiring English by Year 6 and the others were excluded by virtue of not having sat KS2 assessments at all.

She got 81 using your calculation. Quite some progress!!

Or those four students would have gone to school and done great at the Michaela school like other pupils do there. They are not managing out pupils and parents want their kids to go there !

This is how the Good Schools Guide explain it:

What is Progress 8?
Progress 8 is a type of 'value-added' measure that indicates how much a secondary school has helped pupils improve (or progress) over a five year period when compared to a government-calculated expected level of improvement. Confused? You may need a moment to get your head round it but essentially this measure takes a pupil's performance in relation to their peers at primary school level, compares it with their performance at GCSEs (their Attainment 8 score) and then, after some mental arithmetic, establishes whether the individual has progressed at, above or below the expected level. As before, the scores for individuals are not published but they are grouped together to get an average for a school's overall score.

How is the Progress 8 score calculated?
For example, the Department for Education looks at a Child A's GCSE grades in eight subjects (Attainment 8) and then compares them to the GCSE results of all children across the country who, five years earlier, performed similarly to Child A in Key Stage 2 reading and writing. From here, numbers are crunched to work out the average expected level of progress for pupils nationwide, as well as how Child A has performed in comparison and the school's overall score.

• A score of zero means that the school's pupils progressed at a rate in line with the average rate of progression of other children across the country who achieved similar results at the end of Key Stage 2.
• A score above zero means that school's pupils have progressed more than children across the country who achieved similar results at the end of Key Stage 2.
• A score below zero means that pupils made less progress than children across the country who achieved similar results at the end of Key Stage 2. A negative score does not mean there was no progress, but rather that pupils made less progress than at schools with higher scores.

We know that.

OP I think I have identified the school - DD goes there. FWIW we have found it to be excellent and DD has loved the all girls environment. DS goes to a mixed school locally and of the two, I think she has had a much better experience. She chose to stay on for sixth form (you are looking at her year group results). Its intake is socially mixed as you will know from the area - it's definitely not the case that everyone is from a middle class hot house primary.

It would be better if it was the peeing and pooping test tbh. I think you were right first time.

You said she had made no progress 🤷‍♀️

No, it's not to account for anything. It just reflects the fact that some other schools were able to make greater progress, e.g. they may have had children with lower baseline SATs scores who got similar GCSE results as this example child.

Progress 8 isn't a measure of progress, it's a measure of "relative progress". It's used to measure the performance of schools compared to other schools whose children got similar SATs results. It shouldn't be used for individual students at all.

It means pupils are getting on average 0.94 of a grade higher per GCSE than their peers who achieved similar levels at the end of KS2. Excellent grades!

But the question was “why is a perfect score at SATs and a perfect score in GCSEs not 0 progress” the answer is that it’s relatively more difficult to get a perfect score in GCSEs… it means the same as what you have said.

It’s used for individual kids all the time for target setting. And sometimes used for individual classes too. It is questionable whether that’s a good or bad thing though! For the purposes of the thread it’s useful to know how it’s calculated for an individual student as it helps conceptualise the idea.