The deadline for schools to check their key stage 4 and 5 performance measures has been pushed back due to problems with data “quality”, the Department for Education has announced.
Schools now have until 7 November to check their assessment results have been recorded correctly before the DfE publishes school-level and national data.
Tes revealed yesterday that schools had found a “far larger than usual number of errors” in the DfE data.
Heads warned that having to recheck new data would lead to an increased workload for school leaders - and Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio called for the deadline to be extended again.
Key stage 4 performance data, which was scheduled to be published tomorrow, has now been delayed. It is now listed for publication “between November and December 2024”.
In an update, the DfE said the publication has been delayed “due to quality issues in data submitted by an awarding organisation”.
Tiffnie Harris, data specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We welcome the delay to the publication of performance data and the further extension of the checking exercise deadline.
“Accuracy is the most important thing when it comes to data and clearly there have been failings in this area that have caused a huge amount of additional work for school and college leaders.
“Lessons must be learned from this as we cannot have a repeat of this chaos next year.”
The DfE had issued an update last week stating it was aware of “issues with missing Pearson BTECs” and with NCFE L1 and L2 VCert grades.
An NCFE spokesperson said issues were caused by a technical error that showed assessment-level outcomes rather than qualification-level outcomes. The spokesperson added that results given to students were all accurate and the correct data had been given to the DfE.
A Pearson spokesperson also said the awarding body is working to resolve the issue with the DfE, and gave reassurance that the correct results had been given to students.
The deadline for schools to check performance data had already been moved back to 25 October after many school leaders reported technical issues downloading their data.
Provisional 16 to 18 results are currently listed for publishing in November.
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
