Progress 8 | Schools Week

League tables 2016: How your school will be judged

The government has this morning published details of what data schools will be judged on in this year’s league tables. The document includes further detail on primary school floor standards, as well as announcing that minimum progress scores for primary subjects will be revealed next month and primary schools will have access to progress data from September […]

The Progress 8 measure explained

If you are not changing your exam entry policy, and results are the same, it is likely your EBacc3 score will drop, explains David Blow June 2016 will be the first year that Progress 8 takes effect for school accountability, along with other headline measures. This is a major step forward as it means that the […]

Ebacc is to blame for the decline of D&T

The numbers of teachers of creative subjects are declining, while design and technology is in its death throes. Ross McGill knows who to blame The Department for Education (DfE) forces teachers to work like Mr Benn, the cartoon character from the 70s. Every day, he leaves his house and arrives at a fancy-dress shop where […]

Ofsted letter to inspectors: ‘Clamp down on gaming’

Ofsted has formally written to inspectors urging them to look out for schools entering pupils for qualifications to boost their league-table standings, rather than in the best interests of pupils. The move follows a string of investigations by Schools Week which revealed how schools were entering pupils en-masse to obscure qualifications to boost their performance. […]

Strike ballots in 7 schools after academy chain SPTA ditches creative subjects and cuts jobs

A curriculum restructure at seven secondary schools in Yorkshire and the Humber will lead to more than 88 jobs cuts as creative subjects are ditched in favour of a more academic focus, the National Union of Teachers has warned. The union will ballot staff at seven schools – De Warenne Academy, Ash Hill Academy and Don […]

How to make teacher training more attractive

Many subjects devalued by Progress 8 are undersubscribed in this year’s training intake. To boost recruitment, Oliver Beach suggests, schools should use new entrants’ skills beyond the classroom We’d all like to see graduates running down university corridors to bag a place in schools. Imagine: economics grads stomping down corridors, carrying Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations […]

The game changer: Schools Week’s year-long investigation into qualification switching and PiXL

Last year, Schools Week revealed how school network partnership PiXL encouraged the use of obscure qualifications to boost pupil attainment and headline performance measures. John Dickens now reveals the results of a year-long study of why such behaviours might not be a sure bet. Schools shifting youngsters to alternative qualifications to boost league table scores […]

Emma Mattinson-Hardy’s top blogs of the week 11 April 2016

Pedagogy is political @PhilBeadle Following the publication of the education white paper, surely there can be no one who doesn’t believe that the reforms are political. In this blog, Beadle argues convincingly that it is also pedagogy that is political. One of the parts that resonated so strongly with me was this description: “The intention […]

The government has abandoned the reception progress measure, but schools should not

I’m struggling to get caught up in the heat of debate over the government’s recent decision not to use the results of this year’s reception baseline testing for the purpose of comparing pupils’ progress. Why? Three different assessments were never going to provide comparable results, and comparability is, seemingly, at the heart of this decision. […]