… in a land far, far away.

Actually it’s not that long ago, unless you consider 5 years a long time and it isn’t that far away either!

For the last week or so many schools will have analysed their results and will be looking for reasons for any drop in key measures especially when they’re biggies.  I would be doing exactly the same and you really do have my sympathies. I feel for you and I know it’s difficult to accept when things don’t go to plan … but don’t take it too hard – the students & parents have a massive role to play too and I’d dare to say they have the “biggest role” to play in all this. Easier said than done.

In THIS POST I said that I wasn’t going to mention grade boundaries. I said this for my own sanity more than anything because the “outcry” about “ABC” exam board moving grade boundaries frustrates the “tits off me” … I can feel a little ball of frustration building up whenever I see people jumping on the bandwagon when the snowball starts on social media. The reason for this stems from the fact that I understand (a little!) how grade boundaries are set … it is all to do with comparable outcomes ( Schoolsweek – Comparable outcomes Ofqual article ) and the process is regulated by Ofqual as explained in this Schoolsweek article about grade boundaries

Essentially we don’t have a system based on criterion referencing – even if all the students achieved over 90% there would still only be a certain percentage of A* to Cs awarded and basically the results are referenced against Key Stage 2 attainment (the same happens with A level using GCSE as the reference point). What this means is that “we” are all competing to get a decent slice of the “pass pie”. Don’t have a go at me .. it’s just the way it is

Before I go on: THIS POST ISNT ABOUT GIVING YOU A REASON WHEN YOUR A*-C HAS DROPPED A COUPLE OF % (yes I’m shouting!). Got that?

Oi! You! If you think you can carry on reading in the hope that I’m going to give you a reason you can give SLT as to why you didn’t achieve the targets … jog on! This isn’t aimed at you. This is aimed at a very small number of schools who will know if they are affected and are probably all over it anyway. What I want to do is put people in contact with each other to share best practice and ideas … it’s a plea of sorts.

The year 11 that have just received their results were part of a boycott of their KS2 SATs (according to this TES article article ¼ of the cohort were involved) and so some of the schools involved did their own tests on entry to year 7 (using the KS2 papers for that year). A couple of schools I’m aware of, found that the teacher assessment data that they’d been given (and more importantly will be measured against) is totally at odds with their own entry tests – even taking into account the summer break, having over half your cohort at least 1 level difference and nearly a quarter with 2 levels difference will have massive implications. This alone isn’t the only indicator though .. read on…

At the time this was big news and some schools were on the ball (if you’re new to teaching you may not be aware of the whole hullaballoo) because they knew it might come back and “bite them on the bum”. These schools have analysed their data and can see from RAISE that the data for this cohort is abnormal to previous and subsequent years  – basically the data is skewed on entry to all the other cohorts and I don’t mean the usual variances.

One of the other big identifiers can be seen when comparing levels of progress across the board to both your own entry tests and also the “official” KS2 levels. Which set of figures would you expect? Which are in line with recent years?

Anyway a few schools have contacted me as a “sort of” sounding board (it is these type of schools that I want to put in touch with each other) and it’s got me thinking about the implications. In the worst case scenario in my mind, I would love to be able to say “suck it up” and get over the GCSE results but that is the BEST thing I can think of saying, and isn’t that perverse and extremely sad – it could be so much worse than that – the implications could be massive if it means that “reported” levels of progress will drop below floor targets. I genuinely hope that if this is the case for any school that they are able to argue the case that their KS2 figures were inflated, however sadly I fear that with the drive to get every school to switch to an academy sponsor I suspect mitigating circumstances may not be considered too deeply!

I promise I’m not putting this post out in an effort to provide reasons for underperformance – as teachers we beat ourselves up about “the one that got away” all the time so please don’t use it as such unless you were genuinely affected. Were you to do so you may risk the validity of any argument from some schools that are now facing a tough year. So if you are affected and want to be put in touch with other heads of departments to discuss your plans of action, share ideas or even just offer a different perspective to each other… email me: mel@justmaths.co.uk – I don’t have any answers for you but the least I can do is put you in touch with each other and leave you to it.