February 2025

If you've had a chance to look at any news today (Feb 3rd) then you will already know that OFSTED released its proposals for the changes to school inspections, along with the draft report cards that will be published once schools have been inspected, and they have launched a consultation which runs from now until 28th April. To be honest, it would have been a surprise if these announcements had been greeted with general approval, but I don't think I've spotted anyone coming out to say that they like what they've seen so far.

At the front of the queue of critics are the unions, with the NEU being particularly vociferous. They've definitely got a point: the old one-word judgements were supposedly scrapped in response to concerns about the high-stakes accountability system which was causing school leaders to fear for their futures if inspections didn't go their way. But today Bridget Phillipson is also launching a consultation on reforming the school accountability system, which runs alongside the OFSTED consultation and begins by stating that "our propsed accountability framework will be more demanding" and goes on to say - quite ominously - that "we should always remember that education is high stakes for the pupils who go through it, and they are entitled to a system which expects and ensures high standards." So, on that evidence, it doesn't appear that either of these proposals are primarily aimed at reducing the levels of stress that many school leaders feel in the run-up to inspections (and that an unfortunate few feel even more severely, following the inspection).

There's been several newspaper articles released already today which summarise the OFSTED proposals, so I won't bother trying to re-invent the wheel. Here are a selection:

As you'd expect, I'm particularly interested in the areas of the new framework that have more of a 'data' focus, which unsurprisingly are 'Achievement' and 'Attendance'. My main concern is whether we could end up going back to the 'bad old days' when some schools felt that they were doomed before the inspection even happened because aspects of their data (and how it was interpeted by OFSTED) meant that it was almost impossible to be 'Good'. And from what I've seen so far, I am worried that the same could happen again.
My initial interpretation of the proposed inspection methodology is that if any of the Evaluation Areas (there are 9-11 depending on the type of school) are judged to be "causing concern" (the lowest outcome on their 5-point scale) then the only possible outcomes for the school are "requires significant improvement" or "special measures": the flowchart (Figure 1 on the consultation page) sets out the criteria for placing schools into a category of concern. Achievement and Attendance are two of the evaluation areas, so this immediately raises the prospect of schools being placed into a category of concern purely based on data threshold measures.The proposed inspection toolkit provides the detail of what inspectors will be looking for in these areas:

For the Achievement in national tests & examinations Evaluation Area it looks as though they might have built in an 'escape-route', because for this area they don't use the standard 'causing concern' to 'exemplary' descriptors in the column headers; instead they go with 'well below average' to 'well above average'. So, this might mean that a school can't be placed into a category of concern purely based on attainment data.
However, they don't appear to have been quite as clever for Attendance. This section states that one of the criteria for 'Causing Concern' is "Attendance is consistently low for all pupils or for groups of pupils and shows little sign of sustained improvement". They haven't said how they are going to define 'Low' attendance, but presumably they are going to have to apply some clear thresholds, below which some schools will inevitably fall, and who will therefore end up being placed into a category of concern solely for their attendance figures. This is clearly going to be a worry for schools that struggle with attendance, through no fault of their own.

I need to spend more time looking into this, but it does strike me as a particularly problematic aspect of the proposals, and it makes me wonder how well it's all been thought-through. I've no idea how much notice OFSTED will take of the responses to their consultation, but I'm going to try to take the time submit some feedback, and it might be useful for you to do the same once you've had a chance to read the and digest the detail of the proposals.

Another important thing to note is that these report cards are only going to be published after an inspection (i.e. they will replace existing inspection reports). I can't see anything in the OFSTED proposals about whether they intend to make changes to the current IDSRs (which are published for all schools every year and are intended to help prepare for inspection) but you'd think that these would have to at least be updated to inform the new methodology. We will have to wait and see what happens to the IDSRs, but the DfE's proposed accountability reforms talk about the development of School Profiles which they say will provide “one stop shop” for information about performance for a range of audiences. The idea is that these will be produced for all schools every year and will incorporate the OFSTED report cards, along with a host of additional information. The proposals are all very vague and have a strong whiff of 'vapour-ware' so I'm not expecting these profiles to appear any time soon.

One final announcement that came out this morning is the publication of the list of the first 20 Regional Improvement for Standards & Excellence (RISE) advisers to be appointed. 17 of them are from the Academy sector, so this doesn't lend any weight to the accusations that the government has declared war on Academies with the reforms it is proposing in the School's Bill.

That was all a bit heavy, so you'll be releaved to hear that there's nothing else significant to report in the way of other assessment & data related news. We are STILL waiting for the MTC and revised KS2 data to be uploaded into Perspective Lite, so I'm unfortunately still unable to update the Analysis Reports. I will continue to check, but it's going to become a pretty pointless exercise if we have to wait much longer!

I can't resist finishing this month's missive with one of my customary digs at our former Schools Minister, Nick Gibb. In a speech at a recent BETT Conference he had the gall to say “I believe that there are some children who need a very specialist approach to how they’re taught because of their special needs, and I think we have let down thousands of those children in the way that we teach them in our schools" without mentioning the fact that he had been in charge of the school system for most of the last 15 years and that he should surely bear responsibility for many of its current failings. More evidence of the fact that accountability doesn't seem to apply to everyone.

January 2025

Unfortunately, this month's update is going to have to start with a repeat from the January 2024 email because, once again, the DfE are being slow to update their data systems. Despite the KS2 performance tables being released a month ago, we still haven't got the revised KS2 data in ASP, and they also haven't yet passed on that data to Perspective Lite and FFTAspire. This means that I am currently unable to make the updates to the Early Analysis Reports that some of you have requested.
Moreover, although the MTC data has been available for individual schools in ASP for some time, it still hasn't found it's way to Perspective Lite yet, so that section of your reports will also have to continue to wait to be updated. It's now less than 6 months until the next round of MTCs have to be administered and I'm starting to wonder whether we will get last year's data before then!

There's very little in the way of new information from the Standards & Testing Agency that's worthy of mention but there was something in their latest email that caught my eye. There was a "reminder" of changes to the way in which absent pupils are handled in the KS2 tests. I haven't previously spotted anything about this, I can't find any mention of it in any other publications and the article ends by saying that more details will be published in March, so I'm not convinced that 'reminder' is the correct description. Anyway, here's the details:

DfE have changed the way they treat absences in the KS2 tests, to support pupils who cannot sit all tests due to unavoidable circumstances.
Historically, where a pupil was absent for a test in a subject with multiple test papers and unable to take it using a timetable variation, they would receive an outcome of ‘A’ (absent) for the entire subject.
From now on (i.e. from 2025 onwards) if a pupil is absent for one test paper but receives enough raw marks in the remaining papers to meet the expected standard, they will receive an outcome of ‘AS’ (at standard). If the pupil does not achieve enough raw marks, they will receive an outcome of ‘A’ (absent). No scaled score will be provided in either scenario.
Apparently, DfE have also applied this change and updated pupil data retroactively for the academic year 2023 to 2024. The updated data will not be visible on the PAG, but is reflected in the revised school-level data published by DfE on Thursday 12 December.
Apparently, they are also contacting all schools with affected pupils directly, but there is no action for schools to take.
The official test administration guidance doesn't currently appear to reflect this change, but the STA article states that it will be updated in March 2025.
My interpretation of this change is that there are no circumstances in which this could have a negative impact on your overall school performance data, but it could (in a very small number of cases) improve the the published figures for the school.

The big news in the wider world of education is that the government's Children's Wellbeing & Schools Bill passed its Second Reading in the House of Commons last week, despite an attempt by the Conservative Party to scupper it, by forcing a vote on an amendment (which proposed a national inquiry into grooming gangs) that if passed would have killed the entire Bill. This is a BIG Bill which pushes forward a total of 39 policies which will have a far-reaching impact on our school system. Some of these policies (e.g. those affecting academy freedoms) will be popular with some and not with others, but there are also some policies which I think nearly all people would agree are well-overdue and need to be implemented as soon as possible. These include:

Compulsory registers for children 'not in school'. These are something that a lot of LAs (including Leeds) have been trying to maintain for many years, with limited success. Hopefully, the fact that they should now become a legal requirement will mean that the teams responsible for them will be provided with the funding and staffing they need to maintain them effectively.
Greater regulation of home schooling. This should make it harder for parents to remove children from school for nefarious reasons, as well as making it more difficult for unscrupulous schools to use 'home-schooling' as a back-door for off-rolling unwanted pupils.
Stronger controls over and monitoring of 'private' schools and crackdown on 'illegal' schools'. We are all aware of the explosion in the numbers of private educational settings and unregistered settings over recent years, and the growing numbers of children who are moved from mainstream schools into these settings. There are a host of potential safeguarding issues which need to be addressed, as well as concerns about the quality of education that children placed in these settings receive.
A Single Unique Identifier to be introduced across multiple data sets. "But we already have the UPN!" I hear some of you cry. The problem that we have always had with the UPN is that it isn't actually Unique(!!) in several ways: it's only used within the state school sector and doesn't extend to early years settings, private schools, FE settings or HE settings, let alone the NHS, social care and the police. This makes the sharing of data across different agencies incredibly difficult and allows children to get easily lost in the system. The UPN isn't even fully unique within the state school system, for example some of you may have had to deal with problems caused by temporary UPNs being issued, leading to children ending up with multiple UPNs. This is going to be a very difficult change to get right, and one which will probably cause some serious headaches along the way. But if it helps to reduce harm and ultimately save lives, it's something that we all should be supporting and working hard to implement.

In less positive news, there's more evidence of the DfE looking for ways to reduce expenditure, such as today's announcement that Computing Hubs are to be scrapped, while Language Hubs are to be scaled back. This comes on the back of a previous decision to close down the Science Hubs and to end funding for the Latin Excellence Programme ("Vae mihi!"). A Schools Week investigation last year found nearly £700 million had been spent on running 13 hubs.

december 2024

We've been provided with some more detail on the DfE's proposed 'intervention model' for schools deemed to be in need of support. Of course, it acronym-tastic and colour-coded to boot: the new system will be led by Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams, who will broker support at three different levels: Universal support for well-performing schools (green), Targeted support (amber) or Intervention (red). However, there still seems to be a significant lack of detail (or even confusion) around who will decide which schools fall into which categories (DfE or OFSTED?) who will pay for the support and who will provide it. There does seem to be more of an emphasis on the role of LAs than there has been in recent years, but LAs have been starved of funding and had their staffing stripped to the bone, so surely there have got to be doubts around their capacity to undertake this work effectively in their current state? In fact, the biggest LA in the country (Kent) has already held up it's hands and publicly admitted that it can't afford to provide school improvement support (and I'm sure many others are in exactly the same position or worse) so it seems that there will have to be a lot more thinking done and money provided before this new system can get off the ground (supposedly by September 2025).

Meanwhile, OFSTED appear determined not to be outdone by the DfE's RAG-rated colour scheme and have dusted off their old B&Q paint charts to design their new Report Cards. If the rumours are correct then we're going to have to get our heads around a veritable rainbow of categories & judgements, the like of which hasn't been seen since the halcyon days of RAISEOnline. Personally, I can't wait for schools to be able to boast about being 'purple in all areas' or to hear headteachers muttering about their 'opportunities to thrive' being a worrying shade of dark umber.
I'm also rubbing my hands with absolute glee at the prospect of Ofsted reintroducing a stronger emphasis on statutory outcomes' in the Report Cards. I'm sure that we all agree that it's been way too difficult over the last few years for us to understand an inspection framework that attempts to evaluate the quality of education without resorting to crude benchmarks of attainment, and I'm equally sure that it will come as a blessed relief to know that as long as we can all be above average, everything will be fine. Honest.

We could be forgiven for wondering whether OFSTED and the DfE are actually talking to each other at all, or just coming up with these weird and wonderful proposals in complete isolation from each other. Bridget Philipson's speech to school leaders a few weeks ago, which went heavy on 'happiness, wellbeing & inclusion' and which was quite disparaging about the negative effects of focussing too hard on examination results does seem to be at odds with OFSTED's re-discovered enthusiaism for judging schools on exactly that.
It's also interesting to note the disconnect within government: Wes Streeting at the Department of Health appears to be very keen on targets and 'naming and shaming'. Let's hope there isn't a reshuffle anytime soon - I don't think he'd be very popular with the education unions.

Hopefully, if you wanted to contribute to the consultation on the DfE's Curriculum & Assessment Review you have already done so, because it has now ended. One organisation that definitely took the opportunity to make their feelings known was the NAHT, who didn't just provide some feedback in privacy, but also shared it with the TES. They stated that multiplication tables check, the phonics screening check and key stage 2 grammar, punctuation and spelling tests are all “unnecessary and should be scrapped”. They also think that the national curriculum and qualification specifications are overcrowded, and that “Measures such as the EBacc must be scrapped and Progress 8 reformed if the government truly wants to encourage curriculum breadth and take up of the creative arts.”
Whenever the Review does come up with some recommendations (and whatever they are) it's going to take a while to get them agreed and even longer to get them inplemented. This means that if the DfE & OFSTED do press ahead with their rapid implementation timescales for school support, Report Cards and inspection frameworks, they are all going to have to be reviewed and adapted again at a later date, to reflect any changes to Curriculum & Assessment.

Finally, over the last month there has been a constant stream of reports and research coming from various third sector organisations which lay-bare the shocking extent of poverty in this country, how it is impacting our children's lives, and the knock-on impacts for schools. Here's a few examples:

After reading all of the above, my Christmas wish is for the government to concentrate harder on tackling the root cause of nearly all of the problems in our education system (poverty), rather than obsessing about school performance and how to measure it.

November 2024

Let's start with a status update on what is and isn't currently available in Analyse School Performance (ASP) and the OFSTED Inspection Data Summary Reports (IDSRs), both of which are accessed via the DFE Sign-in portal:

IDSRs were updated on 10th October and now have data relating to 2024 KS2 & Phonics attainment and 'characteristic & contextual' data based on the 2024 census. Staffing data remains based on 22/23 data, absence data is for 23/24 Autumn term only, and exclusions data is for 22/23. The secondary school release is scheduled for this month. Two-term absence data and MTC data are both scheduled for December. The level of information provided in the IDSRs this year seems even more 'streamlined' than before; a few schools have asked me to write the 'IDSR Analysis' reports that I have produced in previous years but I'm not convinced it's worth it anymore and I'm suggesting that I pop into school instead to talk through the IDSRs instead (which is cheaper for the school and less time consuming for me). I've got some visits booked in already but if you were expecting a report and I haven't been in touch yet please feel free to phone or email me to discuss.
ASP has just been updated with KS2 data for 2024, but Phonics hasn't (it was scheduled for October). Secondary Phase data is scheduled for November and MTC data for December. The format and functionality of APS appears to be unchanged, the only thing that is obviously different is the absence of any KS1-2 progress analyses. Just a reminder that the QLA section (arguably the most useful part of the system) has had 2024 data in it since July!

Talking of data release schedules and delays, we found out just before half term that the publication of the Key Stage 4 Performance Tables will be delayed this year. Apparently this delay was due to problems with data submitted by one of the Exam Boards (Pearson) rather than due to any direct incomptence by the DfE, although I have also seen some secondary colleagues complaining on social media about experiencing severe problems with logging into the Tables Checking portal. The deadline for schools to complete the checking of their data has been extended to 7th November.

There hasn't been a great deal of news coming from the Standards & Testing Agency in recent weeks, the biggest announcement was that they have decided to scrap the 'opt-out' arrangement for schools receiving paper copies of the optional KS1 SATs papers. For this year, schools that want to administer the tests will have to download electronic copies of the papers from the Assessment gateway from May 1st. This decision has been widely welcomed given the fact that it cost £1.6 million last year, the amount of paper used is scary to think about, and there is no way of knowing how many schools actually used the tests either. However, it does mean that schools who do want to continue with the KS1 tests will have to print their own, which shifts the costs on to them.

On the subject of end-of-year / key stage tests and whether or not it's worth doing them, FFTEducationDatalab have just published a study which is quite relevant to that debate. It focuses on how valuable tests are in predicting outcomes at the end of the secondary phase, but the key findings and recommendations are probably applicable to primary schools too. In short, the answer appears to be 'sort of'. To paraphrase the report: 'tests are more accurate predictors in Maths than they are in English', 'don't base your predictions on just the most recent test' and/but 'don't do tests too often'.

Moving away from 'data' and into the wider world of education, here's what's caught my eye recently:

The Curriculum & Assessment Review 'Roadshow' events are all hapening in November. There are some online events and the nearest 'live' event to us is in Doncaster on the 27th. You can register for events here.

There's some good news about the success of a trial project aimed at identifying children who are eligible for FSM but who are unregistered, and automatically enrolling them. The trial scheme is being run by the Fix Our Food project and their website has a form you can complete in order to obtain an auto-enrollment toolkit and resources, which may very well be worth getting your hands on. It is estimated that there are around 470k eligible pupils nationally who are currently unregistered; it's not just in the child's benefit to get them registered, schools are missing out on valuable Pupil Premium funding if eligible children aren't registered.

If you want confirmation of an issue that you probably already suspected was an increasingly severe problem, a recent survey has found that half of parents of pre-school children are not reading to them every day, following the pandemic, compared to two thirds in 2019. The full report from the National Literacy Trust can be found here.

Talking of things that used to be better than they are now, The Institue for Fiscal Studies has published a report that looks at the impact that the Sure Start programme had on youth misbehaviour, crime & contacts with social care. In short, it had a very significant impact. This follows a report early this year that Sure Start had significantly positive short & medium term impacts on educational attainment. Personally, I hope that people within the new government are reading these reports and are thinking about how they can resurrect the best elements of the Sure Start programme, which in my view was one of the best things to happen for deprived communities in recent decades.

The really big recent news has been the Budget and what it means for education. Obviously, the headlines of the overall increase of £2.3billion in schools funding including £1billion for SEND, and £6.7billion for capital investment (e.g. school building programme) are extremely welcome. But is it going to be 'enough'? Rachel Reeves has allayed some immediate fears about whether schools will have to foot the bill for the increased Employers NICs but there are still lots more unanswered questions. As this article by Sam Freedman points out, a lot of the additional funding is just going to be eaten up by 'filling holes' left by the last government, such as the unfunded pay award, Councils' huge SEND debt, and the backlog in school building. This new money might pull a few heads back above the waterline for a while but it's unlikely to get the leaks plugged and the ship sailing in the right direction in the long term. We will have to wait and see what happens over the next few years.

And while the government has been splashing the cash in some places, it's been taking it away in others. The newspaper headlines are being dominated by the Budget announcement about VAT fees for independent schools (is that because the people who write the headlines in our newspapers all send their kids to private schools??) but a week before the Budget the DfE also announced that they were reviewing funding for 44 planned Free Schools ('review' usually ends up meaning 'cancellation'). DfE also recently announced that it's defunding some school maintenance projects due to 'irregularities' and on Friday it dropped the bombshell that it is scrapping the Academy Conversion Grant. To be honest, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the independent schools, Free Schools were always an expensive vanity project thought up by Michael Gove, I'm all for making sure that public-money is spent properly, and the current mess of a system we've got in terms of our mixed economy of Academies/Maintained Schools really does need sorting out; but all of these announcements point very clearly to the fact that the DfE is desparately trying to save as much cash as possible so that it can put it back into areas that it feels are more important and productive.

october 2024

The release schedule for the OFSTED IDSRs has been published: Primary Phase reports are due out in October (probably during half term) and the Secondary Phase reports are due in November. Somewhat surprisingly, the Analyse School Performance data release schedule is the same, with KS2 & Phonics due in October and KS4 in November. It'll be great if the two systems are synchronised this year, but it's never happened before (one has always lagged behind the other by about a month) so we will have to wait with bated breath to see if they get it right this time.

KS2 Question Level Analysis is already available in Analyse School Performance if you want to do some detailed investigation of your pupils' responses to the test questions. The DfE have also released updated provisional KS2 data at a national/regional/LA/ pupil group level here; it doesn't contain any school level data but you could use it to compare your own data against national benchmarks etc if you are doing some self-evaluation and have missed out on one of my reports this year.

The KS2 ARA and the Phonics ARA for 2025 were both published this week. I can't say I've read them from cover to cover but neither of them have an 'important changes' section so I'm assuming they are the same as last year, with the dates updated etc. Talking of key dates, SchoolsWeek have published a handy article with all of the key assessment dates listed for SATS & Phonics here.

The fact that these ARAs have been published without any changes provides confirmation that the DfE's Curriculum & Assessment Review won't result in any changes to the statutory assessment framework until at least 2026 (I doubt we'll see any changes until at least 2027 to be honest). Just a reminder that anyone can contribute to the Reviews' Call for Evidence, which runs until 22nd November.

While DfE appear to be taking their time over C&A review, Ofsted seem to be in a mad rush to develop their new Report Cards; so much so, in fact, that they have unsurprisingly managed to annoy a few people. Some of the teaching unions are concerned about Ofsted 'reforming itself' and about the fact that they haven't been invited onto the reference groups that have been set up. OFSTED have said that they intend to have draft report cards ready to go out for consultation in January 2025, and today there's been another announcement that Ofsted have awarded The National Children's Bureau a £90k contract to “conceptualise vulnerability and inclusion” in order to inform the development of the inclusion measures which will form a part of the new Report Cards. Again, this research is intended to be done and dusted fairly swiftly (within 7 months). That will take us to about Easter, so it looks as though they are still aiming to have the report cards ready for use in Autumn 2025, when they also intend to implement the new phase-sepcific frameworks as well. That's quite a tight schedule, and government organisations are not renowned for working effectively 'at pace'. Fingers crossed it doesn't all go horribly wrong.

Finally, a couple of ghouls who have regularly featured in these updates in the past have re-appeared just to remind us that they are still capable of enraging and amusing us. Nick Gibb crawled out from under his stone to give an interview/retrospective on his lengthy career as Schools Minister, and to promote the book he is writing, which I'm sure will be out in time for you all to put it on your Christmas wishlists. Some of his interview comments got me shouting at my computer screen, particularly his view that any school that has "45 per cent reading, writing and maths combined in a primary school, or 17 per cent achieving the Ebacc" is "failing", "terrible" and "unacceptable". He clearly still has no concept of how schools' context, as well as how they approach issues like inclusion, has an impact on raw attainment measures. We can only be thankful that he's not in charge of the new Ofsted report cards - I'm sure he will be as unhappy about them as I am with him.

The other unwelcome returnee is the former MP, short-lived Education Minister, and now unemployed Jonathan Gullis, who is very unhappy about his lack of success in applying for teaching jobs since he lost his parliamentary seat in July. Of course, he's blaming the 'woke agenda' for the fact that he's not even managed to secure any interviews. Personally, I think it's probably more to do with the fact that headteachers have had to spend the last 5 years watching him behave like an over-excited baboon in the House of Commons, and that they have read his Wikipedia page which shows he worked at no-less than 4 different schools in the 5 years prior to becoming an MP, and his 2020 TES interview in which he happily admitted that his nckname was "Grumpy Gullis - because I never smiled" and that his Head of Year was "probably happy to see me go". After such a ringing self-endorsement, the recruitment crisis needs to get a whole-lot worse before any sane school leader considers giving him a job.

september 2024

I hope you all had a lovely time over the summer and a great first week back at school. Apologies for not getting this update out earlier but I was still busy writing analysis reports last week, and the slight delay has also meant that I've had time to mull over all of those announcements that coincided with the start of term. More of those later, but here's a few items of 'admin' to take note of first:

KS2 Data Checking
Hopefully you should have had another reminder about this direct from the DfE, and I've also seen that the LA's Assessment Team have got an article on the LFL website (which has helpful links to guidance documents etc) but it probably doesn't hurt to repeat here that this exercise has now moved to the DfE Sign-in Portal. The checking exercise 'opens' this morning and you have until 5pm on Friday 20th September to check your data and apply for removals. One other change this year that was news to me is that you can now apply to remove a child if they have arrived (from a country that is on the 'eligible' list) within the last three years, rather than the last two as was previously the case.

KS2 marking and clerical review outcomes will be available on the PAG on Wednesday 11 September 2024. Once logged in, if you go to the 'Completed Activity' section you should be able to see all of the info about the results of any reviews you have requested, while in the 'Available Activity' section you should be able to download copies of reviewed scripts etc. Importantly, you need to bear in mind that outcomes of marking and clerical reviews are not reflected in the September checking exercise, but they should be reflected in the revised school-level data published in December.

Multiplication Tables Check pupil results data are available to be downloaded from the 'MTC Service' section of the DfE Sign-in Portal, until 27th September. Those of you who have received an Analysis Report from me will have spotted that the MTC section is currently blank as there's no school, LA or national level data in Perspective Lite at the moment. Once all of that data appears, I will update your reports and send them out again, but it might be a bit of a wait because the DfE Statisticial Release for the MTC wasn't published until November last year.

The last bit of admin is a reminder that the reception baseline assessment (RBA) must be administered to all eligible pupils in the first 6 weeks after they enter reception. Although I'm sure your EYFS leads have got it all under control!

Now on to the 'fun' stuff:
We were probably all expecting an announcement about the scrapping of 'one-word' inspection judgements to be made at some point in the near future, but the fact that it was done on the first day of term certainly took me by surprise; and the fact that it was actually leaked just before midnight on Sunday got quite a few people very annoyed. However, if you're doom-scrolling through social media in the early hours before the first day of a new school year instead of at least trying to get a decent amount of sleep, you've probably only got yourself to blame. Most of the teaching associations/unions etc have welcomed the announcement, although there have been a few dissenting voices. I won't bore you by rehearsing the arguments here, but I was amused by someone who pleaded "This is going to destroy the school gate banner industry. Has no one thought of them??". In my view, the most significant consequence of this announcement is that those people who are capable of or willing to engage with a level of detail which exceeds 'one word' will now immediately see that schools which would have previously been branded as less than 'Good' overall, are actually very frequently 'Good' or even 'Outstanding' in a number of areas. FFT have released a very timely study which shows that 62% of schools graded RI overall were graded good or better for at least 2 of the sub-judgments.

Once we have all got over the initial excitement of this announcement, however, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that, for at least the next 12 months, nothing much is really going to change: the underlying inspection framework is remaining unchanged for the time being, and until Ofsted reports stop being used by some governing bodies, Trust Boards, LAs, Regional Commissioners & the DfE as a weapon in the war of 'high stakes accountability', school leaders will continue to feel very stressed in the run-up to an inspection.

A potentially much more significant announcement that was also made just before the start of term was the launch of the new government's curriculum and assessment review which will be led by Professor Becky Francis, who is the Chief Exec of the Education Endowment Fund. This wide-ranging review could end up having a much bigger impact on schools in the long term, and while I'm sure most of the focus will be on the 'curriculum' aspect of the review, I will probably be more interested in the changes that they end up recommending for our assessment system. The terms of reference for the review states that the aim is to deliver "an assessment system that captures the strengths of every child and young person and the breadth of curriculum, with the right balance of assessment methods whilst maintaining the important role of examinations". Personally, I'm hoping that they recognise the current imbalance of statutory assessments across the primary and secondary phases: with 5 statutory assessment points (arguably 6 if you count Y2 Phonics separately) between Reception and Year 6, and then nothing until GCSEs in Year 11. It's definitely an opportunity to rationalise the excessive burden of assessments on our youngest children, in my view.

One of the many uncertainties around all of this is how the aforementioned review will dovetail with Ofsted's development of a new Report Card. These new report cards are supposedly scheduled to replace the current reports by September 2025, and while it's very positive that we've been told that there will be a much stronger focus on "schools’ context, their inclusivity and on pupil happiness and wellbeing", I can't believe that Ofsted won't retain at least a passing interest in the quality and content of a school's curriculum and how well it has performed in whatever stautory assessments we will have, going forward. So, either Becky Francis et al are going to have to undertake their review and the DFE act on it extremely swiftly, or (much more likely) we are going to have to accept the fact that whatever format Ofsted come up with for their report cards (and the underyling new inspection framework) in a year's time, it's bound to have to be repeatedly edited to reflect the changes to curriculum & assessment which will almost certainly take years to implement.

It's probably going to get very messy in the short term and we will just have to hope that it all turns out OK in the end. Interesting times ahead!

July #2 2024

Hello again everyone - Hopefully this is the last email from me before I disappear for a couple of weeks on Friday morning (getting a break before I spend all summer writing reports!).

A few questions have come in which might be useful for everyone to see the answers for.

Higher Standard / Greater Depth at KS2

The scaled score thresholds for HS in the tested subjects are usually not published until September, but they have always been 110 since 2016 and there's no reason to think they will be any different this year.
There won't be any official published data for HS / GD until September but Perspective Lite always produce unofficial figures based on the assumption that the thresholds will stay the same. I've just gone into PL and the national figures are already there so I've provided them below. AS EVER PLEASE DON'T MAKE THESE PUBLIC!!
Reading 28%, down from 29% in 2023
Writing 13%, no change from 2023
Maths 24%, no change from 2023
GPS 32%, up from 30% in 2023

Scaled Score conversions

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/key-stage-2-tests-2024-scaled-scores/2024-key-stage-2-scaled-score-conversion-tables
This webpage shows you the conversion of raw test marks into scaled scores.
These are the 'pass-marks' for each subject:
Reading: 27 out of 50
Maths: 54 out of 110
GPS: 35 out of 70

How do children who do not take the test affect our results

Children who do not take the test (e.g. those who are 'working below the level of the test') are included in the denominator for calculating percentage attainment measures. So, if you have 60 children but only 59 took the test and 40 passed the test then the calculation would be 40/60 = 67%
However, children who do not take the test are not included in the average point score calculation. This is because they don't have a score and therefore can't be included ('nominal' point scores are not issued for the APS calculation). To calculate the APS, add up all of the test scores and divide that by the number of children who took the test.
Just to complicate matters, when progress measures were being calculated (they're not this year or next) children with no test scores were given nominal scores and were included in the progress calculation. We will have to wait and see what happens in 2026!

New arrivals from overseas

In previous years, removals of 'new to country' children were applied for via the 'Tables Checking' website in September, but this is no longer active (I tried doing a search and it appears to have been wiped off the face of the earth!!). I believe that there will be a new portal called ‘Check Your Performance Measures Data’ being launched at some point and that headteachers were sent a letter about it in April, but I've not seen a full copy and also can't find anything official about the new portal on the DfE website.
I have found these articles on a couple of LAs websites:
https://traded.enfield.gov.uk/news/2024/jun/2024-check-your-performance-measures-data-school-and-college-checking-exercises
https://www.egfl.org.uk/news/2024/06/2024-check-your-performance-measures-data
The criteria for removals always used to be listed at the point of application and related to the time the child had spent in this country and which country they came from (the originating country must not have English as one of its official languages).
As soon as I have any more details I will circulate them.

Applying for a Marking Review

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/key-stage-2-tests-how-to-apply-for-a-review-of-key-stage-2-results
Use this webpage to apply for a review of the marking of a test script
You have until 11:59pm on Friday 19 July 2024 to submit an application

It sounds as though the process of logging into the Primary Assessment Gateway went smoothly yesterday - the new government must already be having a positive impact

Hope your results were positive yesterday; all the best for the rest of the term and I hope you have a great summer break. See you in September!

July 2024

My body clock still seems to be out of kilter after staying up all night on Thursday to watch the election results: this morning I've been awake since about 3am so I've decided to get up and write my missive for this month rather than stare at the ceiling for another hour.

I doubt that many of you were able to enjoy the excitement of election night first-hand (seeing as you've all got proper jobs to get up for) but I'm confident that for most of you, your Friday morning mood will have been significantly improved by the news that so many of the pantomime villains that have been ruining the show for the last 14 years are now in need of alternative employment. For us educationalists, it was particularly heartwarming to see Gillian Keegan finding out that she was going to have to start looking for a new job, but the absolute highlights of the night had to be Jacob Rees Mogg and Liz Truss finally getting their comeuppance.

I'm sure there will be a range of views and enthusiasm amongst you in relation to the new government, but it's got to be a refreshing change to now have people in charge who are focussed on actually trying to make the country run properly. I'm looking forward seeing a lot less corruption & chaos and a bit more policy & progress towards solving the many problems that face us.

There's still not a huge amount of detail in relation to what's in-store for the world of education under the new government, but Bridget Phillipson's first speech at the DfE seemed to be focussing on getting the basics sorted as quickly as possible: making sure our children have a decent breakfast at the start of the school day, ensuring that early years provision is the best that it can be, providing extra resources for speech & language and mental health support, and addressing the recruitment crisis. And it seems that I'm not the only person who has had an early start this morning: by 8am Ms Phillipson had already launched her campaign to recruit an extra 6,500 teachers. Let's hope these encouraging words are swiftly followed up by positive actions.

Talking of early starts, most of you will be hoping to log in to the Primary Assessment Gateway to download your KS2 results from 7.30am tomorrow. Except that we all know it's not going to be that simple: the STA have already forewarned that system is likely to experience the same delays and long waits that affected many people last year, and that "users may be held in a queue for a short time when signing in”. As teachers, you never have the opportunity of going to a Glastonbury festival, but at least you can now experience what it's like to try to buy a ticket. I sincerely hope that it's not as bad as last year, but if you do end up having to sit in a lengthy online queue, look out for another email from me shortly after 9.30, which will hopefully contain a quick summary of what the national results are looking like.

JUNE 2024

So, Sunak has finally done the decent thing and named the date. You'd think that I'd be happy, but I'm bitterly disappointed because Michael Gove has not done the decent thing; announcing that he will not be standing for re-election.
For many people involved in education, the prospect of Gove losing his seat would have been the "Portillo-moment-to-end-all-Portillo-moments", but the nasty little toad has remained true to form to the end and denied us the opportunity of seeing him humiliated. However, not everyone was happy to see the back of the slug-lord though: Katherine Birbalsingh's eulogy to the "greatest Education Secretary we have ever had" was almost hysterical, and was signed-off with a love heart emoji. I suppose there's someone for everyone out there.

Although Gove has fled the sinking ship in advance of the inevitable, our current Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is still standing, and is also on the list of 12 ministers who are in danger of losing their seats (even though she currently has a majority of almost 20k) so that's got to be a reason to stay up late on election night. Her current strategy for winning back a few votes is to perpetuate scare stories about Labour's plan to make private schools pay VAT, but that has already backfired with lots of people on social media pointing out that the school she was using as an example had announced its closure months ago, citing long term falling-rolls and the cost of living crisis. Nothing to do with VAT.

The right-wing press are doing their best to get people to worry about the 2% who might have to tighten their belts and have one fewer foreign holiday per year or sell the pony to pay their higher school-fees, but I'd rather focus on the 98% who attend schools which are desparate for better funding. However, I'm still not convinced that Labour will be able to solve all the problems facing the education sector with the estimated £1.5bn raised from the raid on private schools. They have already announced almost 30 different education and childcare policies which would eat up the bulk of this money, but there's no mention of how they are going to solve the immediate problem of funding the teachers' pay review (which Keegan has decided to leave for Labour to sort out), no mention of how they are going to sort out the crisis in Special Needs, and no mention of how they intend to reverse the decades-long failure to adequately maintain school buildings. I've no doubt that there will be some improvements under a new government, but it would naive to think that we'll be entering some kind of 'golden-age'.

That's enough politics for now, especially after last night's depressingly uninformative TV debate, so I'll move on to some more mundane matters:

If you want to relive the joys of SATs week, the KS2 test materials have been published and are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum-assessments-practice-materials. This web page also includes links to all of the Optional KS1 test materials, past papers and Scaled Score Conversion Tables. There's also detailed analysis of this year's KS2 Maths papers (one of which I understand was a bit of a 'stinker'!) written by Sophie Bartlett. The Reading paper seemed to be more 'reasonable' this year, but it looks as though they make sure that at least one of the papers every year is gratuitously tough. Does that mean it will be SPAG's turn in 2025??

Tomorrow will see the release of the main January 2024 census data, which will be available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2024. And the Special Educational Needs data collected via the census will be published on 20th June here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/special-educational-needs-in-england-january-2024
If you've requested an Early Aanlysis Report from me I'll be including a summary of your school's pupil charatceristic data (FSM%, BME%, EAL%, SEN% etc) as reported in these January 2024 census figures.

FFT's Education Datalab have done a few studies in the last few weeks which might interest secondary colleagues.

They've looked at the Progress 8 measure and whether it could/should be 'contextualised. Those of you with long memories will remember that FFT invented Contextual Value Added back in the late 1990s and that a form of this was adopted as a key accountability measure by the last Labour government, before it was ditched by our friend Michael Gove. I wonder if they are thinking it migh be time to dust-off the old concept and see if will come back into fashion??
They've looked at whether pupils taught in single-sex schools getter better grades. TLDR, yes, but it's more to do with other factors than the single-sex environment.
They've done a study on the numbers of pupils attending off-site provision. No surprises here, the numbers are much higher in Years 10 & 11, and amongst Disadvantaged & SEN pupils.
And this morning they've just published an analysis of pupil mobility (pupils leaving schools) in Years 7-11. I've not had chance to read this properly yet, but it seems to show that overall rates of mobility are broadly stable compared to previous years, and that 'perhaps unsurprisingly, vulnerable pupils tend to be more prone to mobility'.

Finally, I've been alerted to the fact that the DfE have written to all schools "on 15 April 2024 to inform schools and colleges that from 2024, there would be a new DfE service called ‘Check Your Performance Measures Data’ (CYPMD). CYPMD will use a new portal to administer the school and college checking exercises."
I'm afraid this isn't something I know anything about and I can't find anything about it on the internet yet. I assume it means that the old 'Tables Checking' website has been retired and will be replaced this new portal. Hopefully all of the election shenanigans won't cause a complete collapse in the 'engine of the state' and that someone in the Civil Service will remember to push the right buttons in the right order to make the new system work effectively in Septepmber!

MAY 2024

I hope that you are all feeling as confident and well-prepared as it is possible to be for the impending SATs week. We're now at the stage where there is nothing more to be done except hope that everyone benefits from a restful weekend. Some of you will be crossing your fingers that the parent of the nailed-on-greater-depth-in-all-subjects-star-pupil-who-was-threatening-a-last-minute-holiday will have had a change of heart and allows them to turn up on Monday morning, while others will be worrying about the child who has the potential to reach the expected standard on a good day but who lives in a home that is troubled by domestic violence; especially given the fact that there is a particularly important and stressful football match happening on Sunday. These are just two examples of the plethora of unpredictable events and circumstances beyond our control which can have a huge impact on the 'performance' which schools are judged by. Such are the vagaries of our education accountability system.

If you are a regular reader of these updates then you won't need reminding that the KS2 tests & assessments have an additional element of peril this year because there won't be any progress measures calculated (due to the absence of KS1 prior attainment data in 2020); the 2024 DfE Performance Tables and OFSTED IDSRs will only contain attainment data. This will be a particular concern for schools that will always struggle to meet national attainment 'averages' due to the demography of their pupil intake, and although I hesitate to cynically take the opportunity to advertise our 'Beyond The Gates' demography reports, I do think it's vital for such schools to be able to confidently articulate their 'context' to those audiences who are tempted to make blunt comparisons of the attainment of very different schools. For the next couple of years at least, we need to be constantly reminding ourselves and others that no matter how well we prepare and perform in these tests & assessments, there will always be 20% of schools in the "bottom 20% of schools".

Some people have expressed concern that Sir Martyn Oliver's recent announcement that from September all ungraded inspections will be no longer include 'deep dives' might mean that inspectors will instead revert to an undue reliance on attainment data in forming their judgements. I really hope that this does not turn out to be true, and I honestly suspect that rather than this being a sly reintroduction of data-driven judgements, this decision has actually been motivated by expediency and a desire to deliver a 'quick win' to pacify those who are clamouring for more fundamental and swift reform of his organisation. As he alluded to in his speech at the NAHT conference on Monday, even if he wants to deliver fundamental changes such as scrapping 'single phrase judgements' his hands are effectively tied until there is someone in charge at the DfE who agrees with him. So we will have to wait until Gillian Keegan loses her job (and hopefully her seat as well). Moreover, removing deep dives from about 40% of inspections next year doesn't just make a lot of schools' lives a little bit easier, it also makes OFSTED's life a bit easier too in terms of the workload of inspectors. It isn't just schools that are facing a recruitment and retention crisis.

It seems increasingly clear that the current government is content to just sit back and watch everything fall apart while they delay the inevitable for as long as possible. They've basically admitted that they won't consider changing single-phrase OFSTED judgements because it will cause too much disruption to their own ill-informed systems for categorising schools; they've also owned-up to the fact that it will be almost impossible to fund next year's teacher's pay rise from existing budgets; and they are steadfastly ignoring the ever-worsening special needs crisis. Even more risible is their decision despite the ongoing teacher recruitment crisis to axe the Now Teach Recruitment scheme. It's just part of their wider programme of witholding much-needed public funding in order to deliver a few more tax cuts, in the hope that they will buy a few more votes and save a few more of their skins. They know they won't have to deal with the deepening problems caused by their actions for much longer and they are just looking out for themselves.

Talking of 'saving their own skins' the growing number of Tory MPs who are trying to ensure their survival by crossing the floor of the House to join the Labour Party is causing me some alarm. If the Labour leadership are prepared to welcome someone like Natalie Elphicke into their ranks, you've got to wonder whether there is anyone they wouldn't accept. I lost a fair amount of sleep last night thinking about the prospect of Michael Gove suddenly having one of these Damascene conversions and returning as Education Secretary under a Keir Starmer premiership. At this rate, I think Labour will have to drop their famous election anthem of yesteryear 'Things Can Only Get Better' and replace it with 'What Goes around Comes Around' by Justin Timberlake.

APRIL 2024

Many thanks to all of you who have already informed me of your requirements for 2024-25, it looks like I'm going to have another busy year! I only have a few 'slots' left for Early Analysis Reports over the summer, so if you want a report please let me know as soon as possible.

This time of year is a particularly onerous period for your assessment leads, who must feel as though they are being bombarded from all sides with deadlines, regulations and checklists. The Standards & Tesing Agency have released no less than 34 different documents relating to statutory assessment so far in March this year; hopefully your assessment colleagues (especially if they are new to the role) are coping OK and getting the support they need.

Talking of the upcoming round of statutory assessments, in the last couple of days the NAHT have argued that the 2024 KS2 results shouldn't be 'made public' in the normal way this year and shoud be interpreted with extreme caution because of the lack of progress data (due to the pandemic-related cancellation of KS1 assessments in 2020). While I completely agree with the main thrust of this argument, I can't help wondering why NAHT have waited until now to raise this as an issue: we've known that this was going to happen for a long time and the NAHT should surely know how difficult it is to get this government to address an issue. I can only assume that this is some form of 'rearguard action': they know that there's nothing that they can do to change the decision so they are making it clear that they think schools shouldn't be judged on this year's results. Many of you who have recently been inspected will have experienced hardly any discussion about 'data' with inspectors, but I do know that there are some schools who have been on the end of unduly harsh judgements that have been influenced by their inspectors' un-nuanced interpretation of low raw attainment figures. In the absence of progress data for the next two years there is a clear danger that these instances of misinterpetaion of attainment data by inpsectors could become more prevalent.

So, this is a reminder (for me as well as much as anyone else) that we need to find some time to contribute to OFSTED's 'Big Listen' survey which closes on 31st May. There's no guarantee that Sir Martyn Oliver and his chums will take a blind-bit of notice of what we say, but if we don't speak up now then I suppose we can't moan about what they do in the future. And I wouldn't want to miss out on that opportunity.

This month's news has provided plenty of other reasons to be uncheerful:

The long-running scandal of the extortionate fees charged by private companies for children's social care places has been running below the radar for some time but has started to attract some attention recently. If you've ever wondered where all of your LA's Children's Services budget goes to, the country's biggest private care company apparently charged councils a total of £575 million this year, with £1 in every £5 being syphoned off to private equity investors and the company chairman receiving a salary of more than £1 million, while their front-line staff are paid £10.75 an hour. Addressing this scandal has surely got to be one of the top priorities for any new government.
In my last update I had a little rant about the ineffectiveness of raising the amount that parents will be fined for unauthorised absences, and the stupidity of this policy has been further confirmed by new research which shows that it will have the most negative impact on our poorest children. Pupil absence is a really serious issue, but as Geoff Barton states: "There is a wider issue about absence relating to the growing number of children who suffer from anxiety and other mental health issues, families who are struggling to cope, and disengagement with education, which schools are endeavouring to address by working with families and pupils to improve their attendance rather than using fines. Schools need more help from the government in this work both in terms of the funding they receive and investment in local social care, attendance and mental health services. Education has become an unofficial fourth emergency service picking up the pieces for a decade-long erosion of support services. This cannot go on."
Another depressing read was served-up by Sir Kevan Collins with his account of the four months he spent trying and failing to get the government to take COVID catch-up seriously. Of course, the abject failure of this initiative has got absolutely nothing to do with the pupil absence crisis that we are currently facing!
Sir Dan Moynihan is another Knight of the Realm who has previously been closely connected to the Conservative education establishment but who now appears to be publicly re-positioning himself in advance of the general election. He also wrote an article earlier this month, promoting new poilcy priorities including tackling child poverty, sorting out the crisis in early years provision, attendance, mental health and school funding. All of this would require a lot of new money; perhaps a new government could ask him and his deputy CEO at the Harris Federation to contribute part of the £750k they take in salaries to help address these new priorities?
The DfE have been shouting very loudly about the additional funding they are making available to support a much-needed expansion in SEND schools, provision and places, but what they are less keen for everyone to hear about is that all this money is being found by robbing other pots of money already allocated to local authorities and schools for other purposes. On top of this, while the government is claiming that all RAAC-affected schools are receiving the money and support they need, this means that all of the other schools whose buildings are falling apart for reasons other than RAAC are being left with nothing.
Ofqual have released a review last year's SATs which confirms what we all already knew: that the Reading test was 'harder' than in previous years, with 3 in every 10 children not making it to the end of the paper. However, we apparently don't need to have any concerns about the test because they "found no evidence that the test failed to meet its stated purpose of ascertaining what pupils have achieved". Another thing that we should also stop complaining about is the repeated chaos with the online portal on results day. While they acknowledge the fact that 'some' schools were unable to access results when the gateway opened at 7.30am, by 10.30 am 79% of school had managed to download their results. So if you were one of the 21% of schools that wasted their whole morning trying to get your results by lunchtime then I guess that's just bad luck and you should just Suck.It.Up. We don't want Capita to have to put a dent in their 2.6 billion quids-worth of annual revenue by actually providing a system that works for us, do we!
And finally, we've just been informed of one more (last?) reshuffle at the Department for Education: Robert Halfon has joined the exodous of rats leaving the sinking ship, he's not standing for re-election as an MP and has resigned as Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education with immediate effect. I was really worried that the shaved-ape-in-a-suit Jonathan Gullis would be brought back as a stop-ga(s)p but Sunak has decided that he will do a better job of providing more red-meat and culture-wars as the Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party now that Lee Anderson has joined Reform/GB News; so we will have to make do with Luke Hall MP, who as far as I can tell has no previous experience of the world of education other than his own time at school. Apparently he started working at the Yate branch of Lidl at 18 and went onto become its manager before becoming the area manager of Farmfoods, so at least he will have a career to fall back on when he loses his seat at the general election.

Happy Easter, and I hope you have an unseemly number of eggs to work your way through over the next few days.

MARCH 2024

There's a couple of deadlines relating to KS2 tests coming up: pupil registration and applications for early opening of tests both need to be completed on the PAG by next Friday (8th March).

If you or anyone you know is looking for an additional income stream this summer, then it appears that the STA is still looking for people willing to work as markers of KS2 tests and you can apply here (current deadline appears to be 7th March).

After informing schools in March 2023 that they would need to acquire a second electronic device in order to administer the RBA in 2024, the DfE have now changed their minds and arrangements will stay as they are until 2025. At least they've been honest and admitted that this delay is to allow themselves "more time to develop and test this approach" rather than out of any concern for schools. The updated guidance on IT requirements for the RBA is here.

As you will be already aware, from 2024 KS1 tests are optional and there is no statutory requirement submit teacher assessments. I have asked Leeds LA whether they are planning to give schools the option of submitting KS1 TA data to be uploaded to Perspective Lite and they have confirmed that they will not be offering this service. This means that there won't be any KS1 data in Perspective Lite for me to include in my 'Early Analysis' Reports. Over the next few weeks I'll be considering how this (and the lack of KS2 progress data) impacts my standard offer and how much I charge for the reports this year. I'll send out my 2024-25 service offer information before we break up for Easter.

There hasn't been a lot of educational news hitting the headlines in recent weeks, and I'm afraid that there has been even-less in the way of 'good news':

This investigation has revealed the extent of the sharp rise in children being taken out of the school system to be educated at home since the pandemic.
Also 'on-the-up' is the amount of money schools are having to spend on supply teachers, which has risen by a third in the state sector overall, and which has more-than doubled in special schools.
The ongoing teacher recruitment crisis is showing no sign of recovery, with the only increase in new applicants coming from overseas.
Meanwhile the government focuses on 'fixing' a problem that most schools have already adressed, by releasing new guidance on the use of mobile phones.
And the likely incoming government is hard at work developing policies that will involve spending as little money as possible, such as this initiative to tackle misogyny in schools.

Yesterday, it was announced that from September all schools will be required to share thare their daily attendance registers with the DfE. However, the headline-grabbing element of the announcement was that parental fines for unauthorised absence will be rising by £20 to £80 per parent. I can't help thinking that this is going to have a negligble impact on those parents who currently take term-time holidays. I've just done a quick search on Travel Supermarket, looking for a 7 night B&B stay in a 4star hotel on the Costa Del Sol for a family of 4. If you go at the end of July it'll cost you about £3,400 but if you wait until the beginning of September it will cost about £2,200. That's a saving of £1200, so you'd still be saving over £1000 even if you're fined.
I think we all know that tackling poor attendance is very challenging and complex, involving very few quick-fixes and lots of hard work. Perhaps the government should direct its energies towards addressing the many long-term, ingrained social issues which create many of the barriers to good attendance.

february 2024

Analysing School Performance (ASP) has now been updated with KS2 Revised data and if you generate the School Performance Summary from the 'All Reports' section it now contains several new analyses, including progress tables for Disadvantaged children as well as scatterplots of progress and attainment in each subject. The IDSRs have also just been updated with KS2 revised data.
It also looks like the absence data in ASP has been updated to show figures for the first two terms of 2022-23 (it was previously showing 2021-22).

Y4 Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) data has been very hard to get hold of until recently but it is also now present ASP as well as popping up unexpectedly in Perspective Lite. In ASP, the only MTC measures that are shown are a 'mean average score' and a 'percentage taking the check' measure. The latter is particularly interesting: the national 'participation rate' is 96% but this figure varies considerably for different pupil groups: the lowest (unsurprisingly) is for children with EHCPs (47%) and for children requiring SEN support it is 94%; however the national figure for Disadvantaged children (93%) is also very low. I'm wondering whether this is a reflection of poor attendance rates for Disadvantaged children (which we already know is a severe problem).
While ASP does provide pupil group participation rates, it doesn't provide pupil group attainment figures. I can't decide whether this is intentional or just plain-old incompetence. But what it means is that while a school (or an inspector) can see the participation rate for its Disadvantaged children, it can't see their results. This may or may not be a good thing.
However, if you do want to see a pupil group breakdown of your MTC attainment then you can get it from Perspective Lite. But they don't provide participation figures. Nothing like a bit of consistency to make everyone's life a bit easier, eh?

Ironically, the DfE have only managed to upload the final KS2 2022-23 attainment data to their reporting systems a matter of days before we all have to turn our attention to the 2023-24 round of tests and assessments. The Primary Assessment Gateway (PAG) opens on 12th February and the first job you need to do on this is to register your KS2 pupils (by March 8th) Apparently, the guidance for this exercise will be updated on 8th February.

On to the education 'news', here's 4 articles from the last month that provide yet more evidence of the government belatedly noticing issues that have been bleedin' obvious to the rest of us for ages:

Schools minister Damian Hinds has admitted the workload of New Teacher Mentors is 'too high' as he announces reforms that he knows are very unlikely to be implemented before the next election.
The DfE have now decided to not to go ahead with their changes to the EBACC accountability measure, which were due to affect the 2024 KS4 cohort. The measures really do need to be changed, but these changes need to be applied to cohorts that are yet to start KS4 studies, rather than 'changing the goalposts' at the last minute.
If you ever suspected that your OFSTED inspector was 'making it up as they went along' then this has been confirmed with the news that the online recording system that they've been using for years has regularly crashed and left them with no record of the notes they made on site, forcing them to write-up inspection evidence from memory.
Academies minister Baroness Barran has expressed concern about the lack of support that some RAAC-affected schools have received from their local authorities. That'll be the local authorities that have had 60% of their funding cut since 2010 and don't have any staff left then, won't it?

Finally, I expect many of you will have seen this already, but a few days ago the YEP randomly published a collection of the '49 best photos of Leeds teachers from the 1990s'. This has been an absolutely joyous nostalgia trip for me, as someone who started work in Leeds in the early 90s, who recognises many of these faces, and who remembers most of them fondly. See how many you can spot, there's at least one person who's on this mailing list!

January 2024

There has been a particularly annoying lack of activity in relation to the DfE making KS2 revised data available. The Performance Tables were published on the 14th December, so we know that the data exists somewhere, but the DfE are yet to update the Analysing School Performance (ASP) system, and even more annoyingly, it appears that they are currently witholding the data from Perspective Lite and FFTAspire. This means that those schools which have asked me to update my analysis reports to reflect revised data are going to have to wait until the DfE pull their fingers out and get this sorted, hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer.

January is a popular time for updating those new diaries and calendars you got in your Christmas stockings, so here's a reminder of where to find all of the key dates for statutory assessments. If you've been lucky enough to receive a multi-year diary you can even go as far as 2026! https://www.gov.uk/guidance/primary-assessments-future-dates

The only notable data that I'm aware has been published recently is the regular update to the national pupil attendance statistics which can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools. FFT Educationdatalab have also released an interesting study of the figures they collect from participating schools https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2024/01/pupil-absence-in-autumn-term-2023/. This shows that although there was a spike in absence towards the end of last term, it wasn't anywhere near as extreme as last year's and that absence over the whole of the term was therefore not as high as in Autumn 2022.

You'll probably have seen that Labour have recently been making a lot of policy announcements on Education, and they've had a big focus on how they intend to tackle absence. You all know how hard I try *not* to be cynical, but I can't help thinking that some clever policy adviser has noticed an opportunity for an "easy win" here. Official Absence figures run a year 'behind', so at the moment everyone is looking at the 2021-22 figures which were awful, mainly due to COVID. However, if we are already starting to see an improving trend in unofficial attendance figures it could well be the case that an incoming Labour administration could make some swift changes when they come into office and take credit for the improved official attendance figures in 2023 and 2024, irrespective of whether or not there was any link between cause and effect. Luvly Jubbly!

Here's an article which summarises what Labour say they will do in relation to absence. These include plans to legislate for a register of children not in school, funding for schools to deliver early language support, mental health counsellors in every secondary school, curriculum reform and breakfast clubs. They also say they are going to investigate a "Children's number" - 'What about the UPN that already exists?' I hear you cry - I'm assuming that they are talking about an identification number that is assigned at birth (or on entry to the country) rather than on admission to school, which can be used across the whole of the public sector estate rather than just in education. This would have the benefit of joining up datasets from different organisations, which has always been a huge problem and was a major stumbling block for the old 'integrated children's services' vision of the previous Labour government in the noughties. In my experience, though, this will be a very difficult project to deliver and will have to be a long term ambition. Their proposal to use Artificial Intelligence to spot patterns in pupil absence sounds even more 'imaginative' but I expect this is something that people like FFTAspire are playing around with anyway so it might not be too far-fetched. Again, the last Labour government were quite keen on stealing ideas from FFT (who remembers Contextual Value Added??) so I wouldn't be surprised if they are talking to people behind the scenes about the viability of this kind of stuff. Meanwhile the current government appears to be pursuing the strategy of attendance hubs, with an announcement that this programme will be expanded, with 18 new hubs to be created.

Labour are also starting to provide a bit more detail on their wider education policies. Bridget Phillipson delivered a speech at the beginning of the week and summarised the main points on social media. There is confirmation that they intend to reform OFSTED and to separate the monitoring of safeguarding and attendance from the core business of inspecting educational standards. There are also plenty of other attractive-sounding promises, but the detail on funding is sparse: I'm not convinced that taxing private schools and non-dom billionaires will provide enough cash to deliver everything they are talking about!

I realise I might be starting to sound like a bit of a Labour fan-boy (don't worry, I'm sure I will find plenty to moan about if/when they get into power) so in the interest of balance, I feel I should share the good news story that the DfE were making a big fuss about yesterday, that there are now around 440 family hubs opened in 75 local authorities. They only need to open up another 1000 to get back to somewhere near the level we were at 13 years ago before they closed 1400 Sure Start Centres!

Finally, recent news headlines have been dominated by the Post Office scandal, but if you look hard enough you can always find an education angle - and this one is particularly juicy. The investigation is working its way back to the source of the problem: the IT system used by the Post Office, which was delivered and run by Fujitsu. And guess who was a senior IT executive at Fujitsu for many years and who was even its CEO between 2015-18? Only one Michael Keegan, loving husband of our current Education Secretary Gillian Keegan. And Fujitsu have continued to be awarded billions of pounds in publicly-funded government contracts since the inquiry into this scandal was first launched in 2019. Labour are saying that they will relentlessly pursue and retrieve corrupt government payouts to businesses - perhaps Education could benefit from some of this money in the future - we can only hope!

December 2023

Finally, the last week of this seemingly endless term is almost in sight! I'm sure you are all looking forward to next Friday afternoon when I hope you will be able to take a bucket-full of mince pies straight to bed and only emerge from hibernation when the eggnog runs out.

If you are hoping that this update will raise your festive spirits, I'm sorry to disappoint. And the DfE are also doing their best to keep a lid on any seasonal jollity by releasing the KS2 Performance Tables this morning. Yay! These are the first publicly-available school-level figures for the primary phase since 2019, so they are bound to attract some attention. The indicators published for each school are:

the percentage of pupils achieving the ‘expected standard’ in Reading, Writing and Maths (combined)
the percentage of pupils who achieve at a higher standard in English reading, English writing and maths (combined)
the pupils’ average scaled score in: Reading and Maths (separately)
average progress scores in Reading, Writing and Maths (separately)
The Performance Tables website also includes absence data (inc PA) for the 2021/22 academic year, pupil population data from the January 2023 census and Workforce and Finance data from 2022-23.
The figures published in the should reflect any successful requests for removals that you submitted as well as any successful remarks.
However, I've already noticed that the website doesn't appear to have been updated to reflect recent inspections - some schools that I know have been inspected in the autumn term and have had their reports published still have their previous inspection information displayed on the performance tables website.

It's been well-over a month since my last update and I don't think anyone would thank me for trying to summarise everything that's happened since the start of November, but there is one event of particular signficance that I do need to mark with appropriate solemnity and respect, and that is the terribly sad resignation of Nick Gibb who - as many of you will be aware - was a particular 'hero' of mine who has been regularly referenced in these monthly missives. Mr Gibb has been at the heart of Conservative education policy making for the last 20 years, he has been a government minister for most of the last 13 years and has served no-less-than 3 stints as Schools Minister! He has been pivotal in most of the significant reforms introduced (inflicted?) over recent years, including (but not limited to): The Phonics Screening Check, The Multiplication Tables Check, The Reception Baseline Assessment, SPAG tests, the imposition of specific methods for teaching reading, the 'knowledge-rich' curriculum, the dropping of Contextual Value Added, the introduction of the EBacc (and the subsequent decline of creative subjects in secondary schools), the Free Schools Programme and the encouragement of 'zero-tolerance' behaviour policies. That's quite a list of 'achievements' to look back on with pride while he enjoys his retirement. Whatever your opinion of him, it is unquestionably the end of an era and we are unlikely to ever see another individual politician who has such a significant impact on our education system.
Gibb has been replaced by Damian Hinds. Yes, that Damian Hinds, who was Secretary of State for Education for about 18 months under Theresa May (he was the one who came between Justine Greening and Gavin Williamson, if you can remember either of them). Unlike Gibb, I can't recall any of his 'achievements' and I doubt he will be providing me with as much material for these updates.

Despite Gibb resigning in early November, he couldn't resist jumping back into the limelight at the start of December to celebrate the publication of this year's PISA rankings which, he claims, demonstrate the "phenomenal success" of his "evidence-led" reforms. I always look forward to the release of the latest PISA data by the OECD every year: it's like the World Cup of data-football, with competing teams of politicians, educational factions and vested interests trying to use the data to score 'goals' for their side. Gibb, for example, hailed England's rise to 11th in the world rankings for Maths (which I think is fairly meidocre for the 5th largest economy in the world) while Bridget Philippson (for Labour) made a big deal about the fact that the actual scores achieved in the tests by English pupils have fallen in all subjects compared to 2018 (they've fallen in most countries, probably due to the pandemic).
However, my attention was drawn to the fact that only 66% of the English schools selected to take part in the sample PISA testing actually undertook the tests, and that only 75% of the selected pupils within these schools actually sat the tests. Despite the fact that this was way-below PISAs' own participation standards (and that most other countries successfully met these standards) the results for England were still included in the rankings with no caveats about their reliability. Some commentators have noted that 'lower-performing' schools and 'less engaged' pupils were likely to have been under-represented in the English sample and that our overall results are therefore likely to be significantly over-inflated. And the whole exercise is about as informative as a game of Numberwang.

While Gibb and Phillipson were battling it out over the interpretation of the academic PISA results, perhaps the most important (and scary) figures coming out of the wider data set published by the OECD related to pupil wellbeing. Again, these figures are also affected by the same participation issues, but assuming that 'lower performing' schools and 'less engaged' pupils were under-represented, it means that the actual situation is probably worse than suggested by these figures:

life satisfaction scores of English pupils are significantly lower than the OECD average and amongst the lowest in the world rankings.
More than 10% of pupils (almost twice as large as the OECD average) said they had to skip meals every day or almost every day because of a lack of money. Apparently, on this measure we are on a par with Mexico and Moldova.

A few similarly depressing research reports were also published at around the same time as the OECD report:

The latest UNICEF child poverty report has found that the UK has seen the largest increase in child poverty between 2014 & 2019 of any of the 39 countries included in the study. Most countries saw a decrease in child poverty but ours has increased by 20%.
The Centre for Social Justice has found that the UK is in danger of sliding back into the “Two Nations” of the Victorian era marked by a widening gulf between mainstream society and a depressed and poverty-stricken underclass.
The Joseph Rowntree Trust has found that 3.8 million people in the UK experienced destitution in 2022, including around one million children. This is almost two-and-a-half times the number of people in 2017, and nearly triple the number of children. Destitution is defined as people being unable to afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.

And yet for some, rather than addressing our society's growing inequalities, the answer to the educational 'disadvantage-gap' is to throw a bit of spare cash at some friendly businesses offering 'catch up' tutoring programmes and then blame schools when that doesn't work.

Finally, if all of the above still hasn't dampened your festive spirit, here's a seasonal take on the Ofsted situation which will chill you to your bones. In my regular conversations with school leaders I often come away with a strong sense that they are haunted by their own versions of Dicken's three Christmas ghosts. The 'Ghost Of OFSTED Past' provides (for some) a nostaligic reminder of the 'outstanding' achievements of yesteryear, which soon transform into heavy chains of expectation for the future; for others, this ghost unearths past-traumas and makes old scars itch. The 'Ghost Of OFSTED Present' appears as the bell strikes one (or at least by midday on Wednesday) expecting to feast on the bounty of the school's broad and balanced curriculum; but it pays scant attention to the plight of the destitute children hidden beneath the folds of its splendid cloak. And even for those headteachers who are not currently peeking nervously through the frosted panes of the inpsection window, the 'Ghost Of OFSTED Yet To Come' is an ever-present ominous spirit; lurking in the shadows, disturbing sleep, foretelling doom.
After a very painful year in which the injustices and traumatic consequences of the current inspection and accountability regime have been laid bare, let's hope that we can look forward to 2024 'ringing in the changes'. The NAHT & ASCL joint call for an immediate pause to inspections appears to have at least been partially heard by OFSTED who have said that schools can defer inspections scheduled for the last week of term, both the government and the Labour party are talking about the need to reform OFSTED and the new Chief Inspector who starts in January would be well-advised to use his opportunity for a 'fresh start' to address the multitude of concerns with the current system. My wish for the new year is that Sir Martyn Oliver has a Scrooge-like epiphany and that we can all work together to build a more enlightened and benign accountability system.

Merry Christmas and God Bless Us One and All!

November 2023

This edition will mainly focus on the IDSR and ASP. It's going to be tough to make this entertaining, but I'll do my best to keep it readable.

As previousy mentioned, IDSR and ASP were updated (to a greater or lesser extent) with 2023 Primary Performance Data on Thursday 19th October and I've been told by one of the readers of this newsletter that when they got the call from Ofsted on Wednesday the 18th the inspector already had a copy of their IDSR.

The IDSR and ASP don't appear to be running to exactly the same data-release schedules: the IDSR already had statements relating to Phonics, KS1 & KS2 when they were published on 19th, but at that time ASP only had 2023 data for KS2. It has since been updated with 2023 KS1 data but at the time of writing we are still waiting for 2023 Phonics data to appear in ASP. Another difference between the two is that ASP has a slot for MTC data (currently still 2022) while Phonics odes not appear to mention this assessment at all.
The ASP data release schedule did originally state that KS2, KS1 and Phonics would be made available in October, but it has now been updated to 'November' for Phonics. MTC is also scheduled for November, along with KS4 performance data and Absence data for the 1st 2 terms of 2022-23.

In order to access the IDSR and ASP you need to log in to the DfE Sign-in Portal. Each user has individual permissions and you will only be able to see ASP if you have the appropriate permissions. There will be someone in school (oftern the Buisness Manager) who is the 'administrator' for the system and can update users permissions.
Once logged in you should be able to see a link to Analysing School Performance and when you click on it ASP will be launched. The data for each key stage is organised in separate Tabs near the top of the screen, and there is a vertical side-bar menu which allows you to view reports for specific subjects, groups etc. If you're not a fan of playing with data online and would prefer to download and read a report, the best thing to do is click on the 'All Reports' Tab, then click on 'School Performance Summary' and then click on the 2022-23 edition of the report. This again brings up an interactive web-format report, but you can also click on 'Download pdf to print or save' on the right hand side of the screen. Again, at the time of writing, this report only includes 2023 data for KS1 and KS2, not Phonics.

The IDSR can also be downloaded from the 'All Reports' Tab of ASP, it's the 1st link at the top of the list of available reports. When you click on it reveals another link 'visit the OFSTED IDSR service'. When you click on this, if you are lucky it will take you straight to the IDSR but sometimes it makes you log in again. Once there, the IDSR is again presented in web-based format by default, but there's a button that allows you to 'Print this page' - you can 'print' to pdf or to a printer for a paper copy.
Once you have managed to download/view the IDSR you may be even more underwhelmed than usual especially in terms of the information relating to academic performance. The sections of the IDSR are broadly the same as before:
School Characteristics
Ethnicity
SEND characteristics
Staffing
Links to alternative provision and alternative providers
Absence
Suspensions & permanent exclusions
Progress & attainment at KS1 and KS2
Pupil groups

Most primary schools IDSRs won't exceed 3 pages and the progress and attainment section will rarely fill more than half a page. They've dropped the previous format in which there was a statement for every subject at each key stage, even if was just 'there is nothing to highlight for...". Instead, they are only listing those measures which are significantly above or below national. It is quite possible, therefore, that there will be some schools that don't have anything at all shown in the Progress & Attainment and Pupil Group sections of the IDSR.

It is worth noting, however, that if you are using the web-based interactive format of the IDSR you can click on the 'Non-significant data' link which should reveal all of the performance measures for KS2 and KS1 (which includes Phonics); this will show the school result compared to the national result, along with the national percentile in which the school result sits. The reporting of percentiles in the IDSR is new this year (previously they just told you whether the result was significantly above or below national and if it was in the top or bottom 20% of schools nationally) and you had to cross-reference against a technical spreadsheet to see the detail of where your result fell in the national distribution. It should be noted that if your school result is in 100th percentile it is in the top 1% of national results and that if it is in the 1st percentile it is in the bottom 1% nationally.

It's been a relatively quiet month in respect of other educational news, especially once the dust had settled on conference season (see previous update) and since everyone's attention has been focussed on events elsewhere in the world. It's worth providing a reminder of a few things that may have slipped under the radar:

Guidance on 2024 Optional KS1 tests was published on 11th October
The 2024 KS2 Assessment & Reporting arrangements were published on 19th October
Assessment & Reporting arrangements for 2024 Phonics was updated on 1st November

Notable national statistical releases scheduled for November include:

Provisional 2023 A Level and other 16-18 results on 16th November
Multiplication Tables Check attainment data for 2023 on 23rd November. (Presumably ASP will be updated at the same time).
Exclusions data for Autumn 2022 on 23rd November
2023 EYFSP data on 30th November. There's no indication that this information will be made available at a school level in either ASP or IDSR. As far as I am aware, the only system which is still reporting school level EYFSP data is Perspective Lite. FFT Aspire should continue to use EYFSP data (rightly or wrongly) to produce estimates of future attainment but it has never reported school level results at EYFSP.

I'm really struggling to find anything worthy of finishing off this month's missive, Gillian Keegan's pathetic attempt to rile the culture warriors over RHSE curriculum materials thankfully didn't seem to attract too much attention, while Labour quickly squashed her threats to implement minimum service levels by sayng they would immediately scrap them when they come into office. "Thankfully" Gavin Williamson has come to my rescue (he can always be relied upon to provide something horrible/hilarious to talk about): evidence submitted to the COVID inquiry shows that he resisted calls for the introduction of masks in schools simply because he didn't want to 'surrender' to the unions. I'm afraid the COVID inquiry is repeatedly confirming what we already knew: that while schools were not just being left to sort out the crisis on their own, their efforts were also being actively hampered by the chaos, incompetence, greed, deceit and immorality that permeated the whole of government at that time.

OCTOBER 2023

Apologies for the long delay in getting one of these missives out to you this month. This is partly due to me not knowing where or when to start making sense of all of the stuff coming out of the party conferences, partly because I'm still really busy writing reports and partly because Ofsted have been all over Leeds like a rash recently - including at the school where I'm a governor.
For those of you that have already had a visit this term, I hope it went well. For those of you that are waiting for an iminent call, our experience is that it was a tough but fair process, with a major focus on Persistent Absence. I know that this is a challenge for many schools in Leeds: our inspector was insistent that they needed to see evidence, not just of what the school was doing to tackle and reduce PA, but also that those activities were having an impact. Having analysis already at hand, or the capacity to produce it at short notice would be very beneficial going into the inspection window.

Talking of OFSTED and data, our inspector mentioned that they were expecting the 2023 performance data to be made available to them 'very soon'. The data release timetable on ASP states that provisional KS2, KS1 & Phonics data should be released in October, and the IDSRs were published in half term last year, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the same this year. I'm checking the website regularly and will send an email to you all as soon as I see or hear anything. It's worth noting that a couple of weeks ago OFSTED announced that performance data will once again be the “starting point on inspection” once the 2023 data becomes available and that recent training sessions and conferences for inspectors had indicated that if performance data was poor, inspectors would need to make sure evidence showed the school was on the way to improvement for it to achieve a ‘good’ grade.

For those of you eyeing up the prospect of an inspection in 2024-25 or 2025-26, it is worth remembering that KS2 outcomes for 2024 & 2025 will be measured solely in terms of attainment: progress measures will not be available due to the lack of KS1 prior attainment data for those cohorts. I imagine, therefore, that it will be even more important than ever to focus on those children in your current Y6 who will be on the borderline of achieving the expected and/or higher standards, in order to boost your 'percentages' as much as possible. It feelss like a backwards step, but an unavoidable one due to the lack of data caused by COVID.

Since my last update the DfE have published national attainment data at KS2 and KS1/Phonics. There won't be anything new to you in these releases if you've had one of my Analysis Reports and/or been looking at the data in Perspective Lite, which has once again turned out to be extremely accurate and available months before the official data is released.

There's a few of you on the circulation list who are interested in Secondary Phase data: on 19th October DfE will be releasing 2023 KS4 national attainment data, KS4 attainment data at MAT/LA level, as well as Destinations data for 2022.

On to conference season. With the risk of testing out how sensitive your email systems are about bad language, I think that the announcements coming out of the Tory Party conference at the beginning of the month can be summarised as "Shit that shouldn't have happened", "Shit that has already happened" and "Shit that ain't ever gonna happen":

The "Shit that shouldn't have happened" relates to the fact that the DfE have made a monumental blunder in their calculation of school budget allocations for 2024-25. Apparently this error was spotted in September but wasn't announced until a few hours after the conference finished, just after 5pm on Friday 6th October. This was obviously done in an attempt to avoid negative headlines, but it has still caused consternation, with estimates suggesting that this error will mean that the average secondary school will be £57,970 worse-off than predicted in July, and the average primary will be £12,420 worse-off. To add insult to injury, Nick Gibb has recently confirmed that the DfE will not be honouring the original allocations and that schools will have to work out what to do about the shortfall themselves.
The "Shit that has already happened" is Gillian Keegan's main (only?) policy announcement that schools will be required to implement a ban on mobile phones. This is despite the fact that most schools (and nearly all secondary schools) already do have some form of ban in place. It also follows Nick Gibb making the same annoucement in 2019 and Gavin Williamson repeating it in 2021.
The "Shitt that ain't ever gonna happen" came from Rishi Sunak, announcing his 'British Baccalaureate'. Ignoring the fact that this government have repeatedly demonstrated that they couldn't be trusted to succesfully deliver a pizza, delivering a major reform to the examination system such as this would take many years to accomplish - which is time that even Rishi knows that he doesn't have.

Moving on to Labour Party, who look almost certain to be taking over at some point next year and who were definitely trying to look like a government-in-waiting at their conference. I'm a bit worried that if and when they do win the next election, that my monthly emails won't be quite as entertaining, but I think we could all do with a bit of a lack of excitement for a while. A lot of Labour's announcements were very thin on detail, but here are some highlights:

Sir David Bell (former Chief Inspector) will lead a review of Early Years provision. This will look at widening childcare eligibility, increasing the amount of primary school-based nursery provision and looking how to remove restrictions on local authorities from opening nursery provision. It will also look at improving early years staffing. Crucially though, there is no mention of how much if any additional funding will be provided.
The creation of a 'maths equivalent of phonics'. Bridget Phillipson was very keen to point out that it was the last Labour government that actually started the introduction of phonics in English schools and that one of the first things they would do when they take over is to apply the same principles to the teaching of maths. This will include a scheme to develop maths skills among primary teachers, which will be funded as part of the £210m already committed by the party to provide an entitlement to training and professional development for all teachers.
Phillipson's speech also included some vague committments to deliver "a richer curriculum woven through with speaking, listening and digital skills", to turning around the "tutoring disaster” and to introduce "annual inspections for the issues that matter most" (safeguarding??). However, they didn't spend very much time at all talking about how they planned to resolve the teacher recruitment crisis and when pushed on this they had to admit they were were "still working on" the details of how to solve this most-pressing of issues.

The Lib Dems have made some quite ambitious promises on education (it's quite easy to make promises you are unlikely to have to keep):

Providing free, full-time childcare for all children from age two, and for working parents, from the age of nine months.
Reviewing funding rates for early years providers to ensure they ‘genuinely’ reflect the cost of delivering high-quality places.
Closing the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged two to four an additional five free hours of early years education a week, along with tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 per year.
Extra funding for local councils to halve the amount schools pay towards supporting the costs of a child with additional needs, from £6,00 to £3,000.
Increase funding for schools.
Extend free school meals to every child in primary school and to secondary school pupils whose families receive Universal Credit.
Reforming Ofsted inspection

And in the spirit of inclusion and positivity, I've also looked up the Green Party's education policies. However, my inclusivity does not extend to the Reform Party; I'm not prepared to waste my time reading about what those poisonous toads want to do to our children.

That's it for now, all the best for the rest of the month and I hope you all have a lovely break over half-term.

septembeR 2023

I hope that you all had a good first week of term and that you still had enough 'sparkle' left in the tank this morning to greet the new week with vim & vigour!

Thank you for all of the positive feedback I've received for the Early Analysis Reports I've been writing for you over the summer, I've still got some left to get done this month but I'll get them out to those of you who are still waiting as soon as possible.

The 2023 KS2 Tables Checking Exercise opens today and will be available until 22nd September for you to apply to have 'recently arrived' children from the performance tables figures. Apparently you will be able to use the same portal to "amend KS1 data, subject to specific criteria" although I'm not sure what that means, exactly!

From Wednesday, you should be able to access the results of any Marking and Clerical Reviews you have submitted, via the Primary Assessment Gateway. If pupil results have been amended as a result of a review, they can be accessed in the ‘View and download KS2 test results’ form in the ‘Available activity’ section. It's important to note, however, that if you have had any successful marking reviews they won't be reflected in the September checking exercise data (but they should be reflected in the Performance Tables Data published in December).

The deadline for downloading your Multiplication Tables Check Results is September 29th. Just to keep you on your toes, this information is accessed via yet another portal, the link provided in the STA newsletter takes you to the DfE Sign-In website, but I haven't got an account which will allow me see this level of detail. I assume that if you have got access, once you're logged in there will be another link to take you to the MTC section.

Statutory guidance for KS2 Assessment Arrangements for 2024 is already available to download, but just a reminder that there isn't going to be an equivalent KS1 version because from 2024 onwards KS1 assessments are now optional. Apparently, the DfE will continue to produce materials for optional tests and more details will be available later in the autumn.

Another website you'll be needing a login for is the Reception Baseline Assessment Portal. Apparently, the NfER will have sent details of your school ID, username and password in August, but if you can't find that information then apparently you can phone the RBA helpline on 0330 088 417. Good luck with that. As usual, the RBA needs to be administered within the first 6 weeks of term.

If you didn't request one of my Early Analysis Reports and need to get hold of national data relating to KS2 then the DfE statistics will be released tomorrow here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/key-stage-2-attainment-provisional-2023.

National KS1 and Phonics data will be released on an as-yet unspecified date in "September or October" here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/key-stage-1-and-phonics-screening-check-attainment-2023.

FFT have been quick-off-the-blocks this year and there appears to be a full suite of KS2 and KS1 self-evaluation analyses available for at least some of the schools whose data I have been given access to. If you've maintained your subscription then you should be able to log in and see what's available for your school.

On to the "news".

Those of you who read my June and July updates won't have been surprised by the RAAC scandal which finally exploded into full-view of the general public when Gillian Keegan 'lost her bottle' three days before the start of term and decided she couldn't hide the facts any longer. This whole saga reminds me of that long-running storyline in the TV drama Succession, in which every new head of a particular department within the company is informed of a 'dirty little secret' which has to be kept in the dark, and that everything will be OK as long as it stays a secret until the incumbent has moved on to another job and it becomes someone else's problem. Unfortunately for Gill, the skeletons have come falling out of the closet (and the concrete has come falling out of the ceilings) on her watch. Poor thing - and no one has told her she is doing a f*#&%£g good job. As with the TV show of course, the real villians are the people at the top of the corportate ladder, the people who made the decisions to cut-back on the school building and maintenance programmes. I'm finding the basic Maths of this saga quite entertaining: when Sunak was accused of cutting the school re-building programme to 50 schools per year he got really upset and proudly reminded us that he had in fact been responsible for authorising a 'flagship' package of funding which would see 500 schools re-built or renovated. Over a decade. To the casual observer, 50 new schools a year might sound like a lot but we've got more than 22,000 schools in England, so even if you are currently benefitting from a relatively new school building you better look after it really well, coz at that rate it's not going to get replaced for another 440 years!

At the end of last week, MPs approved the appontment of Sir Martyn Oliver as the new head of Ofsted. Apparently, he was one of only two applicants who were deemed to be appropriate candidates for consideration, despite the fact that he (like Spielman) has never been an inspector himself. It sounds like Ofsted are suffering their own recruitment crisis! As head of the Outwood Grange Trust, he obviously has a lot of experience of running schools, but it is interesting to note that he got the job despite the fact that, as recently as January of this year, OGAT was being threatened with the removal of one of its schools by the DfE for high exclusion rates. It will be interesting to see what changes he introduces and how quickly he has to deploy his "flattening the grass" techniques against his critics.

Finally some good news, at least for most of my readers who are based in Leeds and have long-endured a local funding system which means that securing an EHCP is rarer than finding a government minister who hasn't secured a lucrative publicly-funded contract for a close family member. The 'good' news is that schools in 55 other local authority areas will soon be finding it just as difficult to get an EHCP, because the DfE have quietly launched a programme to introduce 20% cuts to the numbers of new EHCPs issued in those areas. It's good to see that the government's commitment to 'levelling the playing field' is as strong as ever, even if it is levelling down, rather than levelling up. If you want to see who the 'lucky 55' are, here's the link.

All the best for the rest of the month and I'll be back in touch if there's any unexpected important news over the next few weeks.