The Department for Education has now confirmed that it will not publish Progress 8 data in 2025 and 2026. The reason? These cohorts of students (current Year 10 and current Year 9) didn’t do Sats and, therefore, there is no key stage 2 baseline to calculate Progress 8 from. It has been decided that there is no viable alternative baseline.
However, the DfE has confirmed that other performance measures (Attainment 8, English Baccalaureate (EBacc) entry, EBacc attainment and destinations) will still be published in these years, alongside the latest Progress 8 available - which will be this summer’s results: progress in the 2023-24 academic year.
What does this mean for schools?
Progress 8 and schools
Well, the first thing is that this should be a relief. Any other alternatives, such as using key stage 1 as a baseline or using a convoluted algorithm to try to compare similar schools, were simply unpalatable.
But it still raises concerns.
If only attainment data were to be published then it would unfairly advantage schools with high-ability intakes. But the decision to keep historical Progress 8 data on the schools’ and colleges’ performance website will be unpopular with schools whose progress is improving.
This is compounded by the fact that this Progress 8 figure will be the current Year 11 - whose secondary education was the most disrupted by the pandemic. Many schools may feel that this summer’s data does not reflect the journey they are on but it will be with them for the coming three years.
More on Progress 8:
However, this is almost certainly the least-bad option. The historical Progress 8 data will likely be displayed with heavy caveats, clarifying that this measure relates to a different exam series than the other measures on the dashboard. It will be important that schools explain this odd set of metrics to stakeholders, including parents and prospective parents.
Accountability in education
So, can schools still talk about the progress their students make with these stakeholders and with Ofsted?
Of course. Most schools will do some form of baseline assessment themselves, and usually triangulate internal progress data with official Progress 8. Schools can, and should, continue to use this to monitor improvement over time.
While Ofsted will only have the historical Progress 8 on the Inspection Data Summary Report (IDSR) until 2027, and won’t look at internal data, it can still be a powerful tool to narrate the journey that you’re on as a school. It’s likely that many commercial providers will continue to provide estimated Progress 8 scores in 2025 and 2026, based on their own extensive data sets.
Although these should always be taken with caution, they may help leaders, governors and trustees to benchmark their performance in these wilderness years.
The DfE has also said that Progress 8 will resume in 2027. At ASCL, we feel this is a missed opportunity. There are many good things about Progress 8, and many in the sector welcomed it when it was introduced a decade ago.
Replacing Progress 8?
However, while Progress 8 takes into account the prior attainment of students, it doesn’t adjust for any other contextual factors such as disadvantage. It also prioritises a narrow, albeit important, range of subjects at the expense of others; especially the arts, technologies and vocational, religious and physical education.
The gap in Progress 8 baseline would have been a chance for the government to reconsider how schools are held accountable. Instead the response has been that the problem is too hard to fix in the short term, and therefore we’ll return to the status quo as soon as we can.
Of course, by 2027 there will have been a general election and, based on the current polls, we may well have a new party of government.
While Labour has not committed to an immediate reform of performance measures, it has confirmed an urgent curriculum and assessment review, which is likely to include the relationship between assessment and school accountability.
It has also indicated a move towards a report card-style system for Ofsted, something ASCL has been advocating for a number of years, which would place less emphasis on single performance measures.
So, indeed, 2024 might be the last time we see Progress 8 as we know it. If so, we wish it a lukewarm farewell.
Tom Middlehurst is qualifications specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
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