The Department for Education (DfE) has recently made some significant changes to the way that secondary school performance is measured, having an impact on schools up and down the country. The aim is to reform the way that schools and colleges are assessed so that all pupils, regardless of background, can make progress and find success across a broad choice of subjects and study programmes.
The government’s vision was to reward schools that set high expectations for the attainment and progress of all their pupils, provide high value qualifications, and teach a wide variety of subjects across a balanced curriculum. The focus was to ensure that accountability became “the servant, not the master, of excellent teaching”. In other words, the accountability system should work with and not against teachers’ main objective – to help their pupils gain the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in their future.
The DfE has expressed that schools will improve the most when teaching professionals have the autonomy to decide how best to teach their pupils – a fact that will come as no surprise to those in the teaching profession! It’s with this in mind that a consultation was launched last year with secondary schools to ensure the accountability measures were fit for purpose, allowing head teachers, teaching staff, parents and other key stakeholders the opportunity to contribute their valuable opinions.
Following the closure of the consultation process, the Government published the ‘Reforming the Accountability System for Secondary Schools’ document which outlines the proposed changes, taking into consideration the feedback from the consultation.
So what are the changes and what do you need to know?
While these changes are not yet live, there are 2 new measures that could well impact the delivery of your school curriculum from as early as 2015. These measures are split as:
- ‘Attainment 8’, which “will show the school’s average grade across the same suite of 8 subjects”
- ‘Progress 8’, which “will show whether pupils have performed better than expected at the end of Key Stage 4 across 8 key subjects”.
There are 8 key areas for the new Progress 8 measure, rather than the 5 that count in the current headline measure of school performance:
- 1 slot for double weighted English
- 1 slot for double weighted Maths
- 3 slots for other EBacc subjects (sciences, computer science, geography, history and languages)
- 3 slots can be taken up by further qualifications from a range of:
- EBacc subjects and/or
- other high value arts and/or
- academic and/or
- vocational qualifications such as the NCFE V Certs.
For more information about the Progress8, V Certs and other qualifications from NCFE then please visit our V Certs pages or email [email protected].
