Ofsted will use this year’s GCSE exam results and Sats data to judge schools’ curriculum delivery, the government said today.
New guidance from the Department for Education for both primary and secondary school assessment says results data will be sent to Ofsted to “inform inspection activity under the Quality of Education judgment; for example, on the impact of curriculum decisions”.
The guidance says that inspectors will be aware that the 2021-22 data is not comparable with other years’ and will be “sensitive in their use of it”.
The DfE has said it will “advise caution” on how assessment and results data is used this year because of the “uneven impact” of the pandemic.
The new guidance on how primary assessment data will be used this year comes after schools minister Robin Walker said earlier this month that Sats would be used to assess how Covid has impacted on schools.
Mr Walker said that the data would shared with Ofsted for “school improvement purposes” and to “help identify schools most in need of support”.
Ofsted to use this year’s GCSE and Sats results
However, in a recent Teacher Tapp poll, three-quarters of primary heads and teachers said they did not have the time this year to “cover the curriculum in sufficient depth”.
In the poll, carried out on behalf of campaign group More than a Score (MTAS) and shared with Tes, only 8 per cent of respondents thought that preparing for Sats this year was helpful to pupils’ learning.
But the clarification in the guidance that the Sats data should not be used to compare schools’ performance with previous years’ was welcomed by James Bowen, director of policy for school leaders’ union the NAHT. He told Tes that, although the union feels that the tests should not be going ahead this year, it is “helpful that the language has moved on”.
Mr Bowen welcomed the fact that the DfE had announced that it will “advise caution” when comparing schools’ Sats data with national or local authority averages, or with other schools.
In a survey published by the NAHT last week, more than nine in 10 school leaders said this year’s Sats results would not provide meaningful data about their school’s performance.
The new guidance emphasises that Ofsted inspectors “will be clear” that 2021-22 data “is not comparable with earlier years’” and “aware of the caveats on the data due to the uneven impact of the pandemic” on schools.
However, the DfE has confirmed that the data will be shared with Ofsted “to go in the IDSR [inspection data summary report] to inform inspection activity under the Quality of Education judgement; for example, on the impact of curriculum decisions”.
At secondary school level, the DfE has also said it will publish multi-academy trust-level performance measures for 2021-22, including scores for Attainment 8 and attainment in English and maths at grade 5 and above.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It makes no sense whatsoever for Ofsted to use data from this year’s Sats and GCSEs to judge schools.
“The pandemic has had a prolonged and serious impact on schools and has done so to a greatly varying extent, with some schools more badly affected by staff and pupil absence than others.
“This means that there cannot possibly be a level playing field in results from tests and exams, and it is unfair and potentially damaging to judge schools on the basis of this data.
“It is all very well to say that inspectors will be sensitive to the use of the data and will be aware of the uneven impact of the pandemic, but if the data is that unreliable, it would surely make more sense not to use it at all.”
Covid has hit schools’ curriculum delivery
Chris Dyson, headteacher at Parklands Primary School in Leeds, said his school was doing everything it could to make the build-up to assessments “as low-key as possible”.
“But I’ve heard from many schools who have the possibility of an Ofsted inspection looming, so, of course, they’re cramming because they know they’ll be judged on the results,” he added.
Mr Dyson said that many pupils had had their education “disrupted” over the past two years and schools were still trying to fill learning gaps.
Mr Walker previously said the DfE had “always been clear” that bodies using school performance data would need to look at “the wider circumstances” of an individual school, and “conclusions should not be drawn based on a single piece of data alone”.
But Mr Bowen said leaders were concerned about the inequality that would arise from the data being published at school level, due to every school having been “impacted very differently by the pandemic”.
He added that the data could give an “inaccurate” picture of the performance of the school because it is “reflecting more their pandemic experience”.
Mr Bowen also stressed that there are fears about how the current high absence rates will impact on Sats tests, when they are carried out in schools in May.
Schools ‘don’t trust’ Ofsted
The DfE guidance says it will make sure “that clear messages are placed alongside any data shared, to advise caution in its interpretation”, and that it will “strongly discourage users of the data from drawing conclusions based on direct comparisons with performance data from earlier years” or “with national or local authority averages, or with other schools”.
However, Mr Bowen said that schools “just don’t trust that the inspectors will treat the data with the amount of caution” that it needs.
“It’s going to be absolutely crucial that the kind of messaging that comes through to inspectors via Ofsted training really focuses on that point about treating 2022 data with a great deal of caution,” he added.
Today’s news that Ofsted will be using the data to measure curriculum performance has sparked concern among heads on social media.
One primary headteacher on Twitter said the news was “unbelievable”, asking: “How can this be fair when schools are still having significant staff and pupil absences?”
And headteacher and NAHT regional secretary Simon Kidwell said he hoped Ofsted would “view all results through a Covid lens”.
“Many schools currently have record numbers of staff absent and have faced significant disruption since the Delta variant took hold last year,” he said.
A spokesperson for MTAS told Tes that its recent poll, raising concerns about a lack of time to deliver the curriculum in primary schools, meant that Ofsted’s plans to “judge curriculum performance” will provide “no useful information at all”.
“This is another example of the inconsistencies in the information provided to schools. On the one hand, the schools minister is saying that Sats results will measure the impact of the pandemic. But the DfE has also made it clear that the usual suite of accountability measures will be produced,” they said.
“Schools also need 100 per cent assurance that the results of the 2022 tests will not be used in any way as an accountability measure.”
Earlier this week, government data revealed that pupil absence had more than tripled in two weeks, and nearly one in 10 teachers were absent.
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We do not base our judgements on exam results, test scores or other data. We use data as the starting point for inspections, to inform our discussions with school leaders, where we unpick what they are teaching children and how they are running their school. We will be particularly careful when considering this year’s data, given the impact of Covid.”
