The absence of Progress 8 is an accountability trap in selective areas

This year, school accountability looks different. With Progress 8 suspended, Attainment 8 has been pushed centre stage. That shift matters, because in selective areas it creates a dangerously misleading picture of school performance.

Selective systems, skewed outcomes

In areas with grammar schools, the playing field is anything but level. High-attaining pupils are disproportionately admitted to selective schools, leaving comprehensives with intakes that are structurally skewed.

Kent is the most striking example, with nearly 35 per cent of pupils placed into grammar schools at age 11, meaning over one-third of the highest attainers never enter the county’s comprehensives.

This number continues to grow with the ongoing expansion of grammar schools across the south east. But the issue is not unique to Kent. Wherever selective schooling exists, comprehensive schools face the same distortion.

Attainment 8 data, as well as percentage pass rates, will take no account of this. For comprehensives left with disproportionately fewer top-end pupils, the numbers inevitably look lower—no matter how effective the teaching or how strong the pupil progress.

In selective areas, Attainment 8 measures intake, not quality.

Why it matters more this year

In most years, Progress 8 helps to balance the story. By capturing the value schools add between Year 7 and Year 11, it gives a fairer view of the impact comprehensive schools achieve with their intakes. But with that safeguard removed, Attainment 8 becomes the headline metric.

Parents scanning league tables won’t see nor care to understand the distortion of selective admissions on this data. They will see raw scores, interpreted as gaps in school quality. These are league tables after all!

This will entrench misconception and disadvantage, and damage the schools already working against structural odds.

Ofsted’s blind spot

The problem doesn’t stop with performance tables. Ofsted still leans heavily on outcomes data when reaching inspection judgements. Inspectors are encouraged to consider context, but in practice, from my own first-hand experience, the judgment boundaries for outcomes do not adequately reflect the structural impact of selective schooling.

This creates a double hit. Firstly, comprehensives are disadvantaged in their data because of the selection system. Then, they are judged against national benchmarks that ignore how skewed that data can be.

The result is an accountability trap. Schools that should be recognised for inclusion, progress and community service are instead marked down against measures designed without their context in mind. No wonder staff morale and recruitment in these schools are under pressure.

Levelling the field

Accountability matters. Families deserve honest information about schools, and schools deserve to be recognised for the quality of education they deliver. But if accountability is to be meaningful, it must be fair and fit for purpose.

First, policymakers must recognise these data distortions in selective areas when interpreting Attainment 8. The measure cannot be taken at face value where large proportions of high prior attainers are absent from an intake.

Second, a contextually driven data measure must return as the headline measure as soon as possible. Where the ratio of local selection is high, data should be adjusted to counterbalance this, giving a more reliable indicator of quality of education to stakeholders.

Third, Ofsted must build stronger contextual safeguards into its outcomes judgments. Schools in selective areas should not be judged on demographics they cannot control. If the inspectorate is serious about fairness, then these structural inequities must be acknowledged explicitly in the framework.

Until these changes are made, Attainment 8 in selective areas will tell us little about the quality of education or leadership.

For comprehensives schools in Kent and in other heavily selective areas, that is an injustice. They educate the majority of pupils and deliver progress against the odds. They deserve better.

Attainment 8 should be a tool for understanding. Right now, in selective areas, it’s a distortion. And for the sake of communities, teachers and pupils, it’s time policymakers recognised it as such.