Testing, Testing, Testing
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07 / 04 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Testing Testing Testing.
Simplicity is Genius, but once there is a piece of technology available which can absorb more and more data, it seems that there is an unwritten rule that says, lets use it.
That is one way of rationalising the new Contextual Value Added figures which are factored into the school league tables – or to give them their correct name, the achievement and attainment tables. These are the tables which quantify how well schools have fared in national examinations and tests like GCSE’s and SAT’s.
CVA,s have been broadly welcomed by most head teachers following a two year pilot scheme. They have been specifically designed to iron out some of the disadvantages which some schools obviously have when you look at the pupil intake and the area in which they operate but oh boy they do make life seem complicated. The one thing they do not do is simply take the bald park exam results.
The system starts by trying to measure how much pupils have achieved relative to what they might have been expected to achieve. The cut off points are from the start of one key stage to the next and within that time frame of their school life each pupil should end up with a score slightly above or slightly below 100 if they are at a primary school or 1000 if they are at a secondary school.
Schools are asked to factor in a lot of data that they routinely collect in order to gain these figures. These include gender, the number of free school meals that the school provides, the number of special educational needs children who attend the school, the first language of all of the pupils, their ethnicity, the measure of deprivation of the community, a measure of the mobility of the pupils, the exact age of the children, an ‘in care’ indicator and the spread of ability within the school. After the SAT’s or GCSE results are compiled, all of the pupils in the above categories are analysed to find an average score and that standardised score is put into the equation to place all schools in a more equitable league table of achievement.
If pupils have scored above the average in each category they help to place their school higher up the league tables. If they score below the average it will reduce the league standing of the school.
And just in case you think that that is the end of the measuring process, it is worth remembering that Ofsted also publishes a report called a PANDA report. This stands for Performance and Assessment reports.
They give an overview of each school’s performance in relation to data from other schools, using Ofsted, the department of Children, Schools and Families and The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. PANDA reports are designed to support schools in their self evaluation reports and as such feed into the inspection process.
Reports and reports on reports are a part of school life nowadays.
There will never be a return to the days when a benign old inspector with years of experience could simply walk into a school and smell whether it was a good school or a poor one. Those days are gone and aspiring head teachers are getting used to the idea.
