School Data Updates

On the face of it, it looks like an improvement. The closing the gap report in last year’s RAISE seemed like an afterthought and once you’d been through the main report you knew it all anyway. I never really saw the point in it. But this year it’s changed: 3 year trends for expected and […]

So, that’s that then. Today was my last day working at Gloucestershire LA after nearly 5 years of wading neck deep in data; supporting schools, battling Ofsted, and trying not to make a nuisance of myself but generally failing. It’s been quite an experience being on the frontline of school improvement during this most challenging […]

Despite the reduction in scale and scope of local authority education services over the past few years, their school improvement remit remains. LAs have a responsibility to support and challenge schools, to intervene where necessary and to help drive up standards; the aim being for all pupils to have access to a good standard of […]

I’ve visited a number of schools in the past couple of weeks and nearly all of them intend to continue tracking with levels for all cohorts for this term at least (fine for years 2 and 6, of course). This doesn’t surprise me – it’s the comfort of the familiar – but it’s a bodge […]

If there’s one phrase I hear in the course of my professional life that’s guaranteed to result in my forehead colliding with a desk multiple times in quick succession (or wall if I’m standing up), it’s ‘attainment gaps’, especially if it’s preceded by the words ‘can you provide me with some….’ and followed by a question […]

A couple of days ago the opening salvos of a war between good and evil were fired across the vast expanses of the Edutwitterverse. From their distant quantitative system of darkness, the number crunching legions of the Evil Empire of Analysis were positioning their Data Death Star in orbit around the peaceful and progressive Moon […]

Some things in life are certain: death, taxes, getting a ‘sorry I missed you’ card from the postman when you’ve just nipped to the loo for 2 minutes. Oh, and having the conversation about the accuracy of infant schools’ KS1 results whenever you find yourself in the same room as a junior school headteacher. This […]

It’s that time of year again. I should have written this a few weeks ago when the results were made available on NCA tools but haven’t had a chance, so sorry about that.  Right, first of all, let’s bust a few myths and kill some (very) bad practice. This is how NOT to calculate L4+RWM: […]

The latest VA calculator can be downloaded here Now in its fourth year, I thought I’d write a blog about my VA tool, which many schools use to calculate VA and to help with target setting. The original version came about in 2012 for two reasons: 1) I discovered, whilst giving a talk on RAISE to […]

In March 2014, the DfE published their response to the consultation on primary school assessment and accountability1. Since then, more information has been published on assessment principles and proposed headline performance measures, as well as proprietary tracking systems promoting their developments to tackle assessment without levels. Now that the dust has started to settle (a […]