Primary schools will not be measured by the government on the progress that Year 6 pupils have made for the next two years, because the Covid pandemic prevented these year groups from taking key stage 1 Sats tests.
The Department for Education has confirmed today that it will not be publishing primary school progress measures for 2023-24 or 2024-25 because it does not have data from KS1 to use to provide a baseline for these pupils’ attainment.
In an update published today, it said that it had considered using results from three other sources - the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP), the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) and the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) - as an alternative baseline, but has decided these are all unsuitable.
In a typical year before the Covid pandemic, school performance tables would give a progress score in reading, writing and maths for each primary school.
This was calculated by measuring the performance of pupils in KS1 and KS2 tests and comparing this progress to pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS1. However, for the next two years, this data will not be produced.
The primary progress scores will return from 2025-26. The department said that in 2025-26 and 2026-27, the progress measures will use the results from KS1 tests as a baseline.
However, from 2027-28, it will then switch to measuring progress in KS2 compared with how pupils performed in the Reception Baseline Assesment. This is because KS1 Sats were held for the final time this year.
The DfE update today also confirms that the government will publish primary school assessment data at school level on the performance measures website again for this academic year.
It said it intends to present the 2022-23 performance measures “in a broadly similar way to prior to the pandemic, for example, with comparison tables for schools, local authorities and multi-academy trusts”.
This will be the first time that school-level performance data from Sats has been published by the DfE since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Sats did not take place in 2020 or 2021 and last year it was announced that the department was not publishing school-level Sats data in its performance tables following the disruption faced by this cohort as a result of the Covid pandemic.
