Abstract
School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the ‘Progress 8’ secondary school accountability system for state‐funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome attainment measure; potential adjustments for pupil input attainment and background characteristics; decisions around which schools and pupils are excluded from the measure; presentation of Progress 8 to users, choice of statistical model, and calculation of statistical uncertainty; and issues related to the volatility of school performance over time, including scope for reporting multi‐year averages. We then discuss challenges for Progress 8 raised by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Six simple recommendations follow to improve Progress 8 and school accountability in England. Context and implicationRationale for this studyThis study fulfils a need for a comprehensive statistical evaluation of the Progress 8 school accountability system in England, which has been in place since 2016.Why the new findings matterA review of Progress 8 is an important contribution as decisions on its calculation and presentation have important consequences for schools and pupils.Implications for educational researchers and policy makersOur findings on the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 and the resulting recommendations made for improvements to the measure and school accountability have clear implications for informing policy makers in the educational system. This includes wider lessons extending beyond Progress 8 to other performance metrics and to other school systems internationally where similar issues apply. Additionally, the review highlights key concerns that the public and school practitioners may like to consider when drawing upon Progress 8 to make decisions around school choice and in assessing how well a school is performing.
Highlights
School performance measures are calculated annually in England for all state-funded schools
The 5A*-C metric aimed to measure the average attainment in each school at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) and compulsory secondary schooling
The fundamental criticism of 5A*-C was that it ignored that pupils start secondary schooling with very different Key Stage 2 (KS2) test results
Summary
School performance measures are calculated annually in England for all state-funded schools. 10 pupils are included in the measure for this school; the data do not provide enough information to declare the true performance of the school statistically different from average, despite its low score of -0.32.
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