Blog

As we noted in How have Primary schools responded to the end of KS1 SATs?, end of Key Stage 1 (KS1) assessments became non-statutory from the 2023/24 academic year onwards. The first cohort to take the statutory Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) had reached the end of KS1 and KS1 assessments were no longer needed to create […] Read Article…

Many schools are using standardised tests from the likes of NFER, GL and Hodder to monitor attainment and progress of pupils, and to predict outcomes; and yet there is still a lot of confusion about how standardised scores relate to scaled scores. The common misconception is that 100 on a standardised test (e.g. from NFER) […] Read Article…

On Wednesday 23 October 2024, James Pembroke and Richard Selfridge recorded a webinar aimed primarily at School Governors looking at the statutory assessment landscape for primary schools. The webinar will be of interest to anyone who wants to find out more about how primary-aged children are assessed. The webinar covers: Are you interested in exploring […] Read Article…

Most schools carry out KS2 test practice at several points across year 6. Pupils will attempt previous years’ papers in reading, maths, and grammar, punctuation and spelling; and the results of those tests will typically be entered on to a spreadsheet or an assessment data tracking system such as Insight. Of course, the pass mark […] Read Article…

In an earlier post, we looked at what we know about Student Absence and what schools should do as a result. Here, we will look at patterns in overall attendance in 2023/24 compared to 2018/19 using an Attendance Percentile measure which we have created using data from schools using Insight. How have patterns of absence […] Read Article…

As James Pembroke and I say in Dataproof Your School (2022, p4), the extensive body of research into teaching, learning and schooling suggests that students need to be in school, in class, focused and learning what we want them to. Here, we will focus on the first two areas: are students in school and in […] Read Article…

In 2016, Becky Allen wrote an excellent article for FFT Education DataLab, which looked at how teacher assessments of writing compared to the results of the reading test at key stage 2. The data showed that there was little consistency within and between local authorities, and concluded that this variability most likely resulted from differences […] Read Article…

Most students are in school most of the time, most absence is due to illness and family holidays during term time represent a small but consistent rate of overall absence. Much of the discourse about attendance in English schools focuses on those students who are absent from school and what happens if families take children […] Read Article…

Roughly half of pupils are in schools which have used the KS1 optional End of KS1 assessment framework materials. End of KS1 assessments became non-statutory from the 2023/24 academic year onwards. The first cohort to take the statutory Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) had reached the end of KS1 and KS1 assessments were no longer need […] Read Article…

Imagine you’ve signed up for a 10k race. On the day of the race, you go to the desk to collect your race number only to be told by the organiser that things are a bit different this year. Rather than everyone starting off in a big group at the same time, you will be […] Read Article…