There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding around how to interpret the headline Performance Measures that schools are judged on.

Firstly, Progress 8 is a range and not a fixed score. Every school has a range that is between 2 confidence intervals.

For instance, if a school claims that it has a Progress 8 score of +0.16 and that it is performing above national average, this is misleading.

Every school has a range so in this case this school could be within the range of -0.04 to +0.24 and because the range crosses “0” the performance of the school is average.

Therefore a fixed score is not advisable to be used by any school.

If any part of a school’s confidence interval overlaps another school’s confidence interval, overall performance and progress is likely to be the same.

The Department for Education explains Progress 8 as: “Progress 8 results are calculated for a school based on a specific cohort of pupils. A school may have been just as effective but have performed differently with a different set of pupils. Similarly some pupils may be more likely to achieve high or low grades independently of which school they attend. To account for this natural uncertainty 95% confidence intervals around Progress 8 scores are provided as a proxy for the range of scores within which each school’s underlying performance measure can be confidently said to lie. The results of schools with a small cohort tend to have wider confidence intervals; this reflects the fact that the performance of a small number of pupils taking their key stage 4 exams can have a disproportionate effect on the school’s overall results. Both the Progress 8 score and the confidence interval for a school should be taken into account when comparing with other schools, pupil groups or national averages.”

There have been no Performance Tables in 2020 or 2021 due to Teacher Grades and Centre Assessed Grades.

Please click on the link below to take you to the DfE Performance Tables website:

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/