Category: Uncategorized

At key stage 2, the national discussion is often focused on the number of children who are – or are not  – reaching the expected standard. Whilst this is clearly of interest, what is happening within the two groups created by the expected standard is potentially much more interesting, as these two groups are evolving…

Many years ago, following a meeting of the Reception Baseline Stakeholder Group at DfE Towers, I went for a cup of tea with a fellow group member and was told a story that blew my mind. As we sat sipping English breakfast in the well-lit atrium, my partner-in-tea asked, “do you know how the expected…

On Wednesday 4 December 2024, James Pembroke and Richard Selfridge recorded a webinar aimed primarily at School Governors looking at the Inspection Data Summary Report (IDSR). The webinar will be of interest to anyone who wants to find out more about how the DfE and Ofsted present data for schools. The webinar covers: Are you…

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” (Dr Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park) Say what you like about Progress 8, at least it involves a standardised test at each end (hint: progress measures should always involve a standardised test at each end!). The problem…

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…

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)…

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…

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…

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…

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…