13th November 2019 15:00
By Blue Tutors
There has been a call for school league tables to take socio-economic factors into account when determining rankings. Reported on the BBC, the study was carried out by Bristol University, and they claim that the measure of how much a student improves is significantly affected by external factors compared to the effect of the school.
Three years ago the Department for Education changed the way they measure and rank schools to take into account the average improvement by students between the ages of 11 and 16. The rankings were solely based on the number of students achieving 5 or more A*-C grades in their GCSEs, but that changed to Attainment 8, students’ attainment in 8 key subjects, and Progress 8, the improvement by students from age 11 until they sit their GCSEs aged 16.
Bristol’s study concludes that the progress made by students over the 5 year period is very dependent so many factors separate from the school those students attend. For example they say that in London the Progress 8 score is significantly higher than other areas of the country. It is much lower in poorer areas. The criteria suggested to be taken into account are: gender, age, ethnicity, residential deprivation, eligibility for free meals, whether English is a first language and special educational needs.
Adjusting for the external measures, some schools’ raking would increase by as much as 500 places, and Bristol say that the difference schools are making is unfairly undervalued in certain situations. Moreover, parents are not being given a balanced view of the difference each school can make to their child.