So, the full set of 2023 results is now available for public consumption. After several years without full accountability data being published, we all find ourselves blinking in the glare of comparison. 

But only if we continue to play that game. 

We know that comparisons this year hold limited value. Even looking back to 2019 makes no sense when you consider those students had little to no disruption to their education. Whereas for those who picked up GCSE results this summer, their last disruption-free year at school was when they were in Year 7. 

Progress 8 pressure

I worry about the impact that combined pressures of public accountability are having on our front-line teachers and leaders - be that inspection outcomes or league tables.

We took relatively few of the opportunities to fundamentally adapt the way that schools work post-Covid, and we should not let the chance to permanently change the way that we use school performance data be another lost opportunity.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t have publicly available performance data on our nation’s schools, but that we should only make public comparisons that help the whole sector to close gaps and get better faster. To ask the education writer Karin Chenoweth question: “Your kids are doing better than mine; what are you doing?”

These reflections are not statements of self-protection in response to disappointment. AET schools did well this year, across all phases, and certainly in terms of GCSE attainment in English and maths.  

At first glance, that should be reason for serious celebration, and we absolutely do applaud the efforts of our students and staff, but what does it really tell us? 

School improvement

It tells us that our schools are in a better position than they were in 2019, but that’s about it. 

Are our results a reflection of significant improvement this year, or more a rebalancing after legacy underperformance?

What our overall trust position doesn’t reveal is the extent of variation across our schools. For grade 4+ English and maths, the gap between the highest performing AET secondary and the lowest was 42 percentage points. If we look at primary outcomes at the end of Year 6, it was 61 percentage points. 

A trust-wide aggregate masks variation in both context and performance. And critically, it doesn’t expose where the work of school improvement needs to happen. 

If crude headline comparison from year to year within one trust is unhelpful, then league tables and headline comparisons between trusts are arguably even more limited. Who is up and who is down might make for fun reading and speculation, but what purpose does it really serve when the hard work is about eliminating variability?

Post-covid metrics

I’m not saying that results don’t matter. They do. Qualifications are the currency of choice for our young people. But we need to be thoughtful about how we use the achievements of past cohorts to inform provision for the children who follow.

Within AET, we use academic performance data in three ways: first, to identify in detail where we have strengths; second, to understand how we can best support each individual school to spot and close the gaps in student entitlement; third, to generate insights into the endemic sector-wide issues we are all facing. 

And we are much more interested in leading indicators - such as reading stanines or attendance, which we have pledged to share on our Project H website.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see headline comparisons reinforcing the real challenges we face - for instance, the impact of attendance on achievement? 

Last year, 31 per cent of our Year 11s were persistently absent from school - this means that just over 1,100 students missed the equivalent of half a day a week in their final year. By any measure, this is just astonishing. What could have been possible if, as a country, we were not in the grip of an attendance crisis?

Attendance improvements

Much has been said about the breakdown of the social contract between families and schools. But too much remains abstract commentary. Attendance in many schools is either stuck or only marginally better this year.

We urgently need to work collectively as a sector to listen to parents and children. We also need to have a clear and consistent message that before anything is possible, the first step requires children to be in school.

Even this is addressing symptom rather than cause. What will it take? Space to determine the curriculum our children want in balance with what “we” determine they need. Significant resourcing in time and money to properly invest in the wider extended curriculum. A hopeful conversation about the opportunities that technology and artificial intelligence present for us.

And all the above can only happen if we realise a fundamental shift in the relationship between schools and public accountability. 

I know I would trade an improvement in attendance this coming year for an improvement in Progress 8. It somehow seems a much more meaningful pursuit.

Becks Boomer-Clark is CEO of AET