A school sector leader has warned that the UK Statistics Authority may need to ensure that this year’s GCSE league tables are “fit for purpose” because schools have faced such differing levels of Covid disruption.
The Department for Education has admitted that this year’s GCSE league tables will need to be viewed with caution because of the coronavirus pandemic’s uneven impact on schools and also cannot be compared with previous years’ results.
But headteachers’ leaders have said this “huge health warning” shows that the performance tables should not be published this year at all.
And an academies sector leader has suggested that the UK Statistics Authority may need to play a role overseeing the data to ensure that it is reliable.
The DfE has produced updated guidance setting out how it plans to measure school performance from this summer with GCSE and A-level exams set to go ahead for the first time in the Covid pandemic.
In this guidance, it says: “We recognise the uneven impact on schools and colleges of the pandemic, and will ensure clear messages are placed on performance tables to advise caution when considering the 2021-22 data. This will include strongly discouraging users of the data from drawing comparisons with performance data from previous years.”
Schools’ fears over this year’s GCSE league tables
However, this admission has attracted criticism and concern.
Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), said his organisation supported transparency around public institutions but added that any information published needed to be “accurate and meaningful”.
“We think there may a role for the UK Statistics Authority in ensuring that performance measures, if the DfE is determined that they are to be published, are fit for purpose this year due to the differential impact of Covid-19,” he said.
“It is important the public is not presented with a picture that confuses school performance with pandemic disruption.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is manifestly clear that the pandemic has had an uneven impact on schools and colleges.
“To then compare their performance with one another on the basis of exam results this year is very harsh on leaders and teachers, and it does not necessarily give parents and communities an accurate view of school performance either.
“The fact that the government has to put a huge health warning on this data to warn people that it is effectively unreliable is a pretty good indication that it should not be published at all.
“Our fear is that, in the annual round of league tables, schools will find themselves being named as ‘underperforming’ in newspaper lists with that health warning lost and consequent damage to their reputation for something that was not in their control.”
The updated guidance from the department sets out how the GCSE 2022 performance tables will be produced. Here is a summary of everything you need to know.
Will GCSE grades achieved in autumn exams count toward a school’s Progress 8 scores?
Yes and no.
The government has said that GCSE and AS qualifications sat as part of the extraordinary autumn series will not be included as part of the 2022 performance measures for schools.
However, its guidance adds that results from qualifications that are routinely offered in autumn, such as technical awards and GCSE English and GCSE maths qualifications, will be included in the school performance measures. It adds that for these qualifications the first entry rule will apply.
This means that a student’s first attempt at an exam will be the one that is included in a school’s performance measure.
The past two years of teacher-assessed grades won’t be included in Progress 8 or Attainment 8 scores
In normal exam years, early entry GCSEs taken in Years 9 or 10 by students can count towards a school’s Progress 8 score in the following years when the student is in Year 11.
However, this is not the case this year if those pupils who were put in for early entries did not actually sit the exam and received a teacher-assessed grade (TAG) after Covid led to the cancellation of GCSE and A-level exams.
The DfE has said that these TAGs achieved by students in the past two years will not count toward a school’s Progress 8 or Attainment 8 scores.
Its guidance gives an example of how this will work in English, where the subject is given a double weighting in Progress 8.
It says: “Where a pupil has taken GCSE English literature in summer 2021, and GCSE English language in summer 2022, we will count the summer 2021 entry in English literature for the purposes of triggering the double weighting for English in Progress 8 and Attainment 8.
“However, only the summer 2022 result in English language will count towards the Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores, regardless of which grade is higher.”
However, the guidance also points out that results of qualifications achieved in autumn 2019 - before the pandemic hit - by students reaching the end of their GCSEs this year will be included in schools’ performance measures as they were achieved through sitting an exam.
The DfE is adjusting the baseline for this year’s Progress 8 scores
Progress 8 measures the performance of GCSE students across eight subjects against a baseline of where they were at the end of key stage 2 before moving to secondary school.
In 2016, changes were introduced to KS2 national curriculum tests sat by 11-year-olds, with pupil outcomes expressed as scaled scores instead of national curriculum levels.
This has meant that the DfE needs to change the way it produces its baseline measure for pupils when calculating Progress 8.
The DfE has said it plans to continue using pupils’ average performance at KS2 across English reading and maths as its measure of prior attainment.
The guidance adds: “We anticipate that these changes in methodology are likely to have minimal impact on the distribution of Progress 8 scores.
The first cohort of pupils affected by the Sats change finished their GCSE year last year. However, league tables were not published for 2021 because exams were cancelled.
MATs will be measured on English and maths scores in GCSE league tables
The DfE has said that multi-academy trusts’ league tables will include both trusts’ Attainment 8 score and results in maths and English GCSE at grade 5 and above.
This is the first time multi-academy trusts will have been measured in these areas.
It has also said that it will publish more guidance on what other measures will be included from the performance of MATs in 2022 and which trusts will be included in the tables.
In the last set of MAT performance measures, published in 2019, the DfE produced results for trusts’ Progress 8 scores and EBacc results.
This was based on the last set of GCSE results that were achieved through exams before the Covid pandemic led to two consecutive years of exams being cancelled.
