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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 Value Added measures for this and future cohorts at Key Stage 2. Key Stage 1 outcomes The results of the KS1 SATs from 2015/16 to 2022/23 (with no results gathered in 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to the Covid 19 pandemic) look like this, based on… 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) is the same as 100 in a KS2 test, but it’s not. Only 50% achieve 100 or more in a standardised test (100 represents the average, or the 50th percentile); yet 74% achieved 100+ in the KS2 reading test in 2024 (and the average scaled… 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 the current state of data in schools and finding out what works and what doesn’t? Join us at one of our 2024-25 Data in School Conferences “I thought it was brilliant! I got home and did a SWOT analysis of assessment in our school to help… 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 for expected standards is a scaled score of 100 – and the high score threshold is 110 – and schools will generally adopt those thresholds as indicators of performance on the practice tests. The problem is, the earlier in the year the pupil takes a… 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 changed over time? In Insight, we currently gather data for 4,000 Primary Schools. Here, we will look at what we know about the changes in overall absence patterns between 2018/19 (the last year pre-Covid 19) and 2023/24, using data gathered by schools using our system.… 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 class? What do we know about the trends over time? What do we know about the current situation? What are the best bets to ensure that students are in school and in class? What should schools do to address missed learning? It is important to… 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 in moderation. The article identified local authorities whose moderation of writing may have been too harsh alongside those that were possibly more lenient. It’s worth pointing out that academies can choose which LA moderates their assessments, and there is some evidence to suggest that schools… 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 out of school during term time. Attendance has been subject to increasing government focus since 2017, when the Supreme Court ruled that ‘regular attendance at school’ meant children should be expected to attend school for every session. The current DfE guidance (first introduced in September… 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 to create Value Added measures for this and future cohorts at Key Stage 2. Whilst this change means that there is no statutory requirement to carry out end of key stage 1 (KS1) teacher assessment, the DfE chose to continue to give schools the option… Read Article…

There are now five statutory assessment points across the primary phase, and one – key stage 1 – that is no longer statutory but is ‘recommended’. Because of this seemingly ever-changing assessment landscape, it can be hard enough for teachers, let alone governors and parents, to keep up. This article aims to provide some key information on each of these important assessments. We hope that it’s useful. The dates of primary Assessment are published here. For context, the following table (correct for 2024/25 academic year) shows which assessments each year group has completed, which assessments were missed due to the… Read Article…