Commenting on the latest guidance on secondary accountability
measures including Progress 8 and Attainment 8, Daniel
Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education
Union, said:
"Progress 8 is fundamentally flawed. It does not account for
context and is not fit to meaningfully describe the work that
takes place in a school – no single score or measure ever
could.
"The fact it will not be calculated for the next two years is
welcomed but it is not the sign of a government understanding
that a school is about more than the results of tests taken by a
small proportion of the school, over a few weeks in summer. It is
being done because they have no other choice, and they intend to
return to it once the pandemic-affected cohorts have passed
through Year 11.
"Other flawed data, focused on attainment not progress, will
still be published this year which will allow people to
mistakenly rank schools and lead them to inaccurate conclusions
about their ‘quality' on the sole basis of exam results. So the
problems will not disappear, even in the years without Progress
8.
"This should be an opportunity to rebalance what is a blunt,
misleading and ineffective school accountability system in
England. Rather than simply judging or labelling a school, with
just one inaccurate word or number, the focus should be on how to
help the education system share in its successes and to support
each other's continual development and improvement."
