Headteachers’ leaders have been told that primary schools will not have to publish their own key stage 2 Sats results from this year on their websites.
School leaders had been concerned that any requirement to publish data on their own sites could have led to schools being unfairly compared with one other based on the Sats test performance of pupils whose education has been disrupted by Covid.
The Department for Education had already announced that KS2 Sats results from this year would not be published in performance tables.
However, the NAHT school leaders’ union had raised concerns with the government about the potential for this decision to be undermined if schools were still expected to publish their own results.
Now the union has received confirmation from the DfE that schools will not be expected to publish their own KS2 results from this year.
Sats 2022: Schools not expected to publish results themselves
James Bowen, the NAHT’s director of policy, said: “The government had already said that they would not be publishing key stage 2 Sats results in performance tables this year.
“However, we had a number of our members who were concerned about what would happen if schools were still expected to publish these results themselves, and whether this data could have been misused to compare school performance unfairly during the pandemic.”
The NAHT raised these concerns with the DfE and said it had received “a welcome clarification” that schools will not be expected to publish their 2022 Sats results.
While the DfE confirmed earlier this year that KS2 Sats results will not be published in performance tables, Ofsted will still be able to use the data to help inform its judgments about a school’s curriculum delivery.
Sats results this year were described by former schools minister Robin Walker as ”disappointing but expected” as the percentage of pupils meeting the expected standard in all three areas of reading, writing and maths fell from 65 per cent in 2019 to 57 per cent this year.
Mr Walker said the fall was not “unexpected” due to the “impact of the pandemic”. He added that the government “recognises and values the work that teachers up and down the country are putting into education recovery” but said that there was “more work to do”.
The DfE made the decision earlier this year to carry out KS2 assessments “without adaptations” in order to maintain a “consistent measure of attainment before and after the pandemic”.
Tes understands that the NAHT has been told that the DfE is in the process of updating the guidance on what maintained schools must publish online and what academies, free schools and colleges should publish online, for exam and assessment results.
However, the government has said schools will not be required to publish data on their test or assessment results at KS2 from the 2021-22 academic year, as these will not be published as performance measures by the secretary of state.
In October 2022, results from the 2021-22 GCSEs and A levels will be published by the DfE on school and college performance tables.
