A review and evaluation of secondary school accountability in England:  Statistical strengths, weaknesses, and challenges for 'Progress 8' raised by Covid-19

Lucy J Prior; John Jerrim; Dave Thomson; George B Leckie

doi:10.1002/rev3.3299

A review and evaluation of secondary school accountability in England: Statistical strengths, weaknesses, and challenges for 'Progress 8' raised by Covid-19

Lucy J Prior^*, John Jerrim, Dave Thomson, George B Leckie

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Education

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

116 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the ‘Progress 8’ secondary school accountability system for state-funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome attainment measure; potential adjustments for pupil input attainment and background characteristics; decisions around which schools and pupils are excluded from the measure; presentation of Progress 8 to users, choice of statistical model, and calculation of statistical uncertainty; and issues related to the volatility of school performance over time, including scope for reporting multi-year averages. We then discuss challenges for Progress 8 raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Six simple recommendations follow to improve Progress 8 and school accountability in England.

Original language	English
Article number	e3299
Number of pages	30
Journal	Review of Education
Volume	9
Issue number	3
Early online date	27 Aug 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3299
Publication status	Published - 1 Oct 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ES/R010285/1 (Prior and Leckie) and ES/T003677/1 (Jerrim). This work contains statistical data from Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK, which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Review of Education published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association

Research Groups and Themes

SoE Centre for Multilevel Modelling
Covid19

Access to Document

10.1002/rev3.3299

Full-text PDF (final published version)
This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Wiley at 10.1002/rev3.3299. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
Final published version, 1.15 MBLicence: CC BY

Handle.net

Persistent link

Embargoed Document

Full-text PDF (author’s accepted manuscript)
Accepted author manuscript, 1.09 MB

How should we measure school performance and hold schools accountable? A study of competing statistical methods and how they compare to Progress 8
Leckie, G. B. (Principal Investigator), Goldstein, H. (Co-Investigator) & Prior, L. J. (Researcher)
24/09/18 → 30/09/22
Project: Research

File

Cite this

@article{e5de5e9798eb4cbf9e4b53fbb39b61e6,

title = "A review and evaluation of secondary school accountability in England: Statistical strengths, weaknesses, and challenges for 'Progress 8' raised by Covid-19",

abstract = "School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the {\textquoteleft}Progress 8{\textquoteright} secondary school accountability system for state-funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome attainment measure; potential adjustments for pupil input attainment and background characteristics; decisions around which schools and pupils are excluded from the measure; presentation of Progress 8 to users, choice of statistical model, and calculation of statistical uncertainty; and issues related to the volatility of school performance over time, including scope for reporting multi-year averages. We then discuss challenges for Progress 8 raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Six simple recommendations follow to improve Progress 8 and school accountability in England.",

author = "Prior, \{Lucy J\} and John Jerrim and Dave Thomson and Leckie, \{George B\}",

note = "Funding Information: This research was funded by UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ES/R010285/1 (Prior and Leckie) and ES/T003677/1 (Jerrim). This work contains statistical data from Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK, which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Authors. Review of Education published by John Wiley \& Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association",

year = "2021",

month = oct,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1002/rev3.3299",

language = "English",

volume = "9",

journal = "Review of Education",

issn = "2049-6613",

publisher = "Wiley",

number = "3",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - A review and evaluation of secondary school accountability in England

T2 - Statistical strengths, weaknesses, and challenges for 'Progress 8' raised by Covid-19

AU - Prior, Lucy J

AU - Jerrim, John

AU - Thomson, Dave

AU - Leckie, George B

N1 - Funding Information: This research was funded by UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ES/R010285/1 (Prior and Leckie) and ES/T003677/1 (Jerrim). This work contains statistical data from Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK, which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Review of Education published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association

PY - 2021/10/1

Y1 - 2021/10/1

N2 - School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the ‘Progress 8’ secondary school accountability system for state-funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome attainment measure; potential adjustments for pupil input attainment and background characteristics; decisions around which schools and pupils are excluded from the measure; presentation of Progress 8 to users, choice of statistical model, and calculation of statistical uncertainty; and issues related to the volatility of school performance over time, including scope for reporting multi-year averages. We then discuss challenges for Progress 8 raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Six simple recommendations follow to improve Progress 8 and school accountability in England.

AB - School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the ‘Progress 8’ secondary school accountability system for state-funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome attainment measure; potential adjustments for pupil input attainment and background characteristics; decisions around which schools and pupils are excluded from the measure; presentation of Progress 8 to users, choice of statistical model, and calculation of statistical uncertainty; and issues related to the volatility of school performance over time, including scope for reporting multi-year averages. We then discuss challenges for Progress 8 raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Six simple recommendations follow to improve Progress 8 and school accountability in England.

U2 - 10.1002/rev3.3299

DO - 10.1002/rev3.3299

M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

C2 - 38607821

SN - 2049-6613

VL - 9

JO - Review of Education

JF - Review of Education

IS - 3

M1 - e3299

ER -