MAY 2025

 By this time next week KS2 SATS week will be in full swing, we will have already got the SPAG test under our  belts and children in Year 6 will be preparing to face the delights of  the Reading paper on Tuesday morning. I'm wondering whether I should  open a sweepstake on which weird & wonderful member of the animal  kingdom we will be learning about this year: in 2023 we had Texan bats,  while last year we had leopards and those cute, spikey Madagascan  hedgehog things. I'm going to make a speculative prediction that for  2025 there will be an article focussing on the increasingly perilous  circumstances facing Amazonian tree frogs, but if you are in the mood  for some potentially more useful predictions and tips for last minute  preparation activities for the tests, then the Primary Learning by Questions website might be worth a quick visit.

Whilst  your current focus will undoubtedly be on getting through the 'testing  season' in one piece, we should also remember that 'results season' will  follow very soon thereafter, and that there are changes afoot to the  various websites and systems that you will need to navigate later in the  summer term:

• If you haven't logged in to the DfE Sign-In portal  for a while, it would probably be a good idea to do so at some point  this month, so that you can sort out the task of setting up Multi-Factor Authorisation (MFA).  This process requires creating a new password and entering  verification codes etc, so it's worth doing it before you need to get  into the portal when it's really busy (e.g. on KS2 results day in  July).  There's some MFA guidance here.
  
• There's also the new 'Check Your Performance Measures Data' Service to get your heads around.  As far as I can tell, this will be the place to visit for all of the Checking Exercises etc; it looks as though it will be accessed via the DfE Sign-in portal,  but the information I've been able to find so far is all a bit vague.  Apparently there will be more emails sent out to headteachers in the  near future, but for now here's a link to the CYPMD 'help-centre'.
  

Talking  of results, thank you to everyone who has already requested an 'Early  Analysis Report' for 2025. I've still got capacity to add one or two  more schools to the list, so if you do want a report but haven't got  round to letting me know yet, please get in touch asap. I think I've  replied to everyone who has already requested a report, but if you're  not sure you can always drop me an email and I'll confirm.

I'm  going to keep this month's missive brief because I'm sure you have  plenty of more important things to be focussing on, but it is worth  noting a couple of things that have been in the news recently:

• If you spent your weekend at the NAHT conference in Harrogate then you will already be well aware that the headteacher's union are taking legal action against OFSTED over their failure to undertake an impact assessment in relation to the  proposed new inspection framework. They are quite rightly pointing out  that OFSTED appear to have forgotten/ignored the fact that the original  trigger for the review of the framework was the coroner's official  finding that an inspection directly contributed to Ruth Perry's death  and that "the focus on school leader mental health and wellbeing has got  lost along the way during Ofsted’s consultation process".
  
• Ofsted have themselves admitted that the report cards need 'simplifying" and they have stated in a recent TES article that they are considering a number of changes.  These could include changes to the descriptors used, as well as changes  to the number of evaluation areas and addressing potential 'overlap'  between the different areas. So it sounds as though there might be a  fairly fundamental re-think going on. All of which makes the proposed  autumn-term launch for the new framework even more unrealistic.
  

And  finally, last week's local elections didn't provide many causes for  celebration, but Andrea Jenkyns' election as the new mayor for Greater  Linconshire was a joyous exception. The fact that there weren't any  elections happening in our vicinity this year meant that this Yorkshire  lass, who was formerly the MP for Morley & Outwood, who was briefly  (and incredibly) an Education Minister under Boris Johnson, and who  famously gave 'the finger' to crowds outside Dowing Street in 2022, has been exported to another part of the country for at least  the next five years. She's already given the good folk of Lincolnshire  an early indication of what to expect by promising to sack all of the Council's Diversity Officers (there aren't any). Personally, I can't wait to be seeing as little as possible of her on Look North for the foreseeabe future. 

The fall-out from the announcements about the proposed new OFSTED inspection framework has continued to escalate, with a pretty consistent chorus of criticism  and very little in the way of approval. Those who are close to Ruth Perry and Caversham Primary have unsurprisngly been particularly vocal, and I agree that these  proposals don't do very much at all to address the issues that were so  problematic in the old system. 

Even the claim that the  'single word judgements' have been scrapped doesn't really hold water:  it's true that schools will no longer be labelled as 'Good' or  'Outstanding', but some schools could still find themselves being  described as 'requiring significant improvement' (or worse) due to a  perceived failing in just a single evaluation area.

In last month's email I provided some detail on a specific issue I had spotted relating to the Attendance Evaluation Area in the Framework. I won't repeat that again, but I will  say that I've double-checked my logic and I still think that it's going  to be possible for a school to fall into the 'requires significant  improvement' category purely based on their attendance figures, even if  every other area is secure or better. I've passed this information  to Simon Kidwell from NAHT, who has said that they will feed it into  their official response to the consultation. Hopefully it will be picked  up and adressed before it becomes a potential disaster.

Moreover, Ofsted have announced that they will be trialling the new inspection framework with 'visits' to 240 settings being organised. Again, this should be  another opportunity for some of the more glaring issues with the  inspection toolkits to be identified and adressed.

Bridget Phillipson has announced £20m of targetted funding to support 'stuck schools' (those graded ‘requires improvement’ at their last inspection and less than ‘good’ at the inspection before that) but SchoolsWeek have done an analysis which shows that, of the 626 schools which currently meet these  criteria, 85% are already academies, and that a third of them will be  ineligible to receive the additional funding because they have undergone  'structural change' (i.e. been academised) since their last inspection.  The analysis also shows that these schools are much more concentrated  in areas of high deprivation. This doesn't just demonstrate the fact  that forced academisation isn't a particularly effective tool for school  improvement, but also that the perceived weaknesses identified in  OFSTED inspections are much more likely to be rooted in the external  societal factors affecting the school, than in anything that has or can  be done within or by the school itself. Again, this begs the question as  to whether it would be more sensible to address these societal issues  directly, than to try to 'fix' the school system.

In more positive news, the government has announced that it is going to make it easier for parents - and more importantly - schools to check free school meal eligibility. The  proposals appear to fall short of full 'auto-enrollment' but it does  appear that they will make it much easier for schools to identify which  families are eligible and to target them directly in order to get them  to sign up for the benefit. Pressure for introducing full auto-enrollment continues to be applied from a number of organisations, so hopefully  the government will see sense on this issue in the near future.

The Chair of the Curriculum & Standards Review, Becky Francis, has provided an indication of the direction of her thinking in a recent article.  I haven't spotted any concrete or specific proposals within the  article, but it is encouraging that she appears to want to make measures  of attainment and achievement more 'inclusive': "In  practice, ‘high standards’ currently too often means ‘high standards  for some’ ... The socio-economic attainment gap remains unconscionably  large in  spite of efforts to reduce it by governments of all colours. The same is  true for the progress gap for young people with SEND. Our ambition is  ‘high standards for all’. We must aim high, drive up standards for all  our young people, and ensure that none are left behind. This is one of  the most significant challenges facing the curriculum and assessment  review, but it is also an immense opportunity, and one that we have  embraced as we undertake our work."

This review is  likely to have a major influence on how & what our children learn,  as well as how & what schools are judged on, for the next decade or  so. Let's hope they do a better job of their reforms than OFSTED appear  to be doing at the moment!

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:

• https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-school-report-cards-the-11-key-proposals/
• https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-chief-its-time-to-reset-the-bar-to-raise-standards/
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20gkmy6k74o
• https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ofsted-report-cards-school-inspection-everything-you-need-know
  

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. 

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:

• More than one in three children in poverty as UK deprivation hits record high (Social Metrics Commission)
  
• More than 1.4 million emergency food parcels distributed in the pat six months (Trussel Trust)
  
• Thousands of migrants are living in poverty as they can’t access benefits (London Trust)
  
• Recommendations for closing the attainment gap for Disadvantaged children (Sutton Trust)
  
• Food poverty in the Early Years (Education Policy Institute)
  
• The persistent Disadvantage attainment gap (Education Policy Institute)
  

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.

 

 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.

 

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!

 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! 

 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!