School Data Updates

Schools are always looking for ways to measure and present progress. Most primary schools have tracking systems that offer some sort of progress measure, but these are almost always based on teacher assessment and involve some sort of level substitute: a best-fit band linked to coverage of the curriculum with a point score attached. Increasingly […]

Many of you will have downloaded this already but I thought it’d be useful to put it on my blog. For those who don’t already have it, it’s a rather low tech and unexciting word document designed to guide you through ASP and pull out the useful data. Aim is to summarise the system down […]

A primary school I work with has been on the same journey through assessment land as many other schools up and down the country. Around two years ago they began to have doubts about the tracking system they were using – it was complex and inflexible, and the data it generated had little or no […]

Yesterday Ofsted released a ‘prototype’ of its new Inspection Data Summary Report and it’s a major departure from the Ofsted Inspection Dashboard that we’ve become accustomed to over the past two years. On the whole it’s a step in the right direction, with more positives than negatives, and it’s good to see that Ofsted have listened to feedback […]

At the end of last term I wrote this blog post. It was my attempt to a) predict what changes the DfE would make to the KS2 progress methodology this year, and b) get my excuses in early about why my 2016 VA Calculator could not be relied upon for predicting VA for 2017. For […]

Updated basic version of KS2 VA calculator can be downloaded here. and new version with pupil groups tables (progress and average scores) can be downloaded here Please download before use (ie don’t attempt to edit the online version). You should see 3 dots top right of screen – click on these to download to your desktop. […]

For primary schools, there are two main issues with the current system of measuring progress: 1) it is high stakes, 2) it involves teacher assessment. Whether we are talking about our own internal tracking systems, or those official end of key stage DfE measures, the former clearly influences the latter. Imagine you are told that you […]

Assessment. It should be simple really: just checking what pupils do and don’t know. But assessment appears to have turned into some kind of war, with the legions of accountability amassed on one side, and the special forces of teaching and learning besieged upon a slippery slope with nowhere to go. We become so focussed […]

It was great to read in Ofsted’s March update that “Ofsted does not expect any prediction by schools of a progress score, as they are aware that this information will not be possible to produce due to the way progress measures at both KS2 and KS4 are calculated.” Sean Harford went even further in his […]

The DfE collects a bewildering array of data from primary schools. This quick guide to statutory assessment is here to help. Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP)This assessment takes place at the end of the reception year when pupils are 5 years old. It  comprises 17 early learning goals (ELGs) against which pupils are assessed […]