WAY OFF THE MARK?
One school above average in new GCSE league tables Five in 17 on Wear side ‘under-performing’ Education chiefs question fairness of rankings
New league tables for secondary schools based on GCSE and A-level performance only reveal a “limited amount about the true quality of a school” an education expert has said.
According to new data, five of Sunderland’s 17 secondary schools are now classed as under-performing.
Nationally, one in eight of England’s mainstream secondaries – 365 in total – fell below the Government’s minimum standards in 2017, according to statistics published yesterday.
That is up from 282 schools – just under one in 10 –the year before.
The Department for Education (DfE) said the rise in under-performing schools is because of technical changes to the points system used by Government statisticians to calculate a school’s performance.
The rise comes amid major changes to England’s exams system, including the introduction of a new grading system, which has meant the data includes English and maths GCSE results awarded new 9-1 grades, while other subjects received traditional A*G grades.
School leaders said the new grading system affecting English and maths has complicated the way school performance is calculated, as it has to be worked out using a combination of old and new grading systems.
On Wearside, Academy 360, Red House Academy, Kepier Academy, Hetton School and Washington School were said to be under-performing. Schools fall below the Government’s performance threshold if pupils fail to make enough progress across eight subjects, with particular weight given to English and maths.
It meant Sunderland was ranked the 12th worst local authority in England, with just under 30% of its secondary schools labelled as underperforming.
Sunderland also scored -0.31 for its overall Progress 8 measure, putting it in the bottom 10 local authorities nationally. That measure looks at the progress a pupil makes from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school. It is a valueadded measure, which compares pupils’ results with the achievements of other pupils that have the same prior attainment.
A secondary is considered to be below the Government’s floor standard if, on average, pupils score half a grade less (-0.5) across eight GCSEs than they would have been expected to, compared to pupils of similar abilities nationally.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “As the DfE itself says, these changes are the main reason why there has been an increase in the number of schools which are deemed to be below the ‘floor standard’ for Progress 8.
“It is extremely unfair that more schools find themselves in this situation because of complex changes to the way in which this is calculated.
“Our message to the DfE, trust boards, governors and inspectors is to avoid leaping to judgement on the basis of these performance tables.
“They only tell us a limited amount about the true quality of a school.”
The DfE insisted that where schools have fallen below the floor standard, the data is “a starting point for a conversation about school improvement”.
Simon Marshall, Director of Education at Together for Children, said: “Schools across Sunderland continue to work extremely hard, supporting and encouraging young people in our city achieve their full educational potential.
“In amongst these results are some outstanding performances both by schools and individual pupils.”