The DfE recently announced that they would cap the extremely negative progress scores (but not the extremely positive progress scores by the way) in order to reduce the impact that such scores can have on school’s overall measures. This is a welcome move considering how damaging these scores can be, particularly for schools with high numbers of pupils with SEND or with small cohorts.
The guidance states that ‘the limit will mean that there is a minimum progress score that is assigned to pupils within the prior attainment groups (PAGs) where extremely negative scores exist. Where a pupil’s score is more negative than the minimum score, the minimum score will replace the pupil’s original progress score when calculating a school’s progress average. The minimum score for each PAG will be determined based on the variation in pupil progress scores for pupils across the country within that PAG (as measured by the standard deviation). The minimum scores will be fixed at a set number of standard deviations below the mean so that approximately 1% of pupils are identified nationally (we anticipate this will normally be no more than 1 or 2 pupils in any school).’
Essentially, this means that the threshold at which progress scores will be capped will depend on the PAG the pupil is in; and the threshold will represent the progress scores of the bottom 1% within each PAG nationally. Whilst the guidance states that ‘predicting which pupils will, and will not, have their score affected by this methodology change, in advance of progress scores being made available, will not be possible‘, we can get a rough idea of the capped score thresholds by using the 2017 standard deviations for each PAG (Ofsted make these available on their IDSR guidance website here).
To calculate the capped score thresholds, the 2017 standard deviation for each PAG has been multiplied by -2.3. This because the bottom 1% on a bell curve are -2.3 standard deviations from the mean.
As always, please note that the thresholds in this spreadsheet are NOT definitive; they are just for guidance. They are intended to show the variation in scores between PAGs and also indicate how low the scores could be even after the capped is applied.
Further reading:
Key stage 2: See pages 8-9 of Primary Accountability Guidance
Key Stage 4: See pages 12-13 of Progress 8 Technical Guidance
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