Secondary Accountability Measures 2022

Today sees the release of the 2022 Secondary Accountability / Performance Measures. They are available here: https://www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables.

These come with caveats a-plenty, including the one below:

Along with this, it should be remembered that these are the first progress measures based off the ‘new’ Year 6 SATs results that used scaled scores instead of national curriculum levels. This year no ‘early entry’ results have been included in progress measures which will have had a dramatic impact on the handful of schools that rightly continued with this through the pandemic because that’s how their curricula were designed.

On many many levels the publication of these is problematic. They’re not in any way comparable to previous years, and that red box is still an understatement with regards to the uneven impact of Covid-19 on schools across the country. This can be seen to a degree in the further widening of the attainment gap for disadvantaged students Secondary school disadvantage gap widens to largest in 10 years (schoolsweek.co.uk).

The Maths teacher in me is disgusted at this abomination of a P8 graph. Where to even begin on the presentation of that data!?

For those of you looking to update your internal spreadsheets and other trackers, the full methodology has been published here, this includes the provisional 2022 Attainment 8 averages for each KS2 ‘prior attainment group’:

It’s worth remembering that this table is provisional, tradition would have it be replaced in a few weeks time with a final version, once all re-marks etc have been factored into the equations.

I hope your school has faired well. For those of you with the unbearable weight of a low P8 score hanging around your neck, I hope that headteachers, governors, Ofsted inspectors and RSCs follow the very clear advice to not make direct comparisons and to discuss with the school or college the story behind their results. 

Above all please remember, you supported a whole cohort of young people through secondary school, in the most difficult of circumstances, and somehow, still helped them to achieve a set of qualifications that will allow them to move on to the next phase of their education – you all deserve a medal 🏅, and a drink 🥃!

Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/secondary-accountability-measures-2022-daniel-stucke/