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

Lucy Prior, John Jerrim, Dave Thomson and George Leckie
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Lucy Prior: Centre for Multilevel Modelling, School of Education, University of Bristol, UK
John Jerrim: Department of Quantitative Science, UCL Social Research Institute, IOE, UK
Dave Thomson: FFT Education Datalab, London, UK
George Leckie: Centre for Multilevel Modelling, School of Education, University of Bristol, UK

No 21-12, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

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.

Keywords: Progress 8; school performance measures; school accountability; school choice; school league tables; value-added model; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04-01
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