There should be a specific word for the particular type of agony school leaders experience when trying to access Sats results the morning they are published.
Having identified the correct login details from scores of options available and waiting while the website tries to cope with “unprecedented” demand, leaders are left facing a list of numbers they know will have a major bearing on how the next 12 months will play out for them and their staff.
And that’s only half the picture - they are then left waiting for months while the Department for Education’s super-computer turns the raw scores into a set of perplexing progress measures that are published for the world to see and digest.
Except this year, they won’t.
Due to the impact of the pandemic, there were no key stage 1 statutory assessments in 2020 so there cannot be a progress measure for pupils now in Year 6.
Cause for concern
We know the DfE explored a variety of alternative progress measures but subsequently decided none of those options were feasible.
So, what does that mean for primary performance data this year? Does it mean that schools will be judged on attainment alone?
The short and somewhat worrying answer is yes - for a couple of years at least.
For some schools, this will be a real cause for concern. It is likely to be a particular concern for many of those schools serving the most deprived communities where their progress data acts as an important counter-balance to their attainment data.
More Sats content
While it is true performance data carries slightly less weight than it used to, and the current inspection framework undoubtedly places less emphasis on published data, it would be extremely naive to say the data produced by the DfE no longer matters.
The government has indicated they see this state of affairs as a temporary “glitch” in the system and progress measures are scheduled to return in a couple of years (albeit based on a different baseline).
But where does that leave us for the next two years?
More than anything, it means any data produced following the KS2 statutory assessment needs to be treated with extreme caution.
This is the main reason why we at the NAHT school leaders’ union think that the government should not publish school-level performance data publicly in 2024 or 2025.
Publishing a single year’s attainment data alone and - even worse - inviting parents and others to make simplistic school-to-school comparisons, would be a big mistake, and potentially harmful for some schools, especially when we know local newspapers are quick to create local ”league tables”.
Acknowledging reality
In the meantime, it is essential inspectors, regional directors or anyone else looking at the data is cognisant of how little they can conclude from this year’s data.
This is true every year, but it will become critical this summer.
To finish on a more positive note, perhaps the absence of a good chunk of data for the next two years could and should prompt a deeper debate about what purpose school performance measures actually serve.
It’s certainly a debate we are keen to have.
James Bowen is assistant general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union
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