Public Bill Committee EDUCATION and ADOPTION BILL
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Public Bill Committee EDUCATION AND ADOPTION BILL WRITTEN EVIDENCE PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS LONDON—THE STATIONERY OFFICE LIMITED PBC (Bill 004) 2015–2016 © Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2015 This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament Licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/ Enquiries to the Office of Public Sector Information, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU; e-mail: [email protected] PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS LONDON – TSO (THE STATIONERY OFFICE) and available from: Online The Houses of Parliament Shop www.tsoshop.co.uk 12 Bridge Street, Parliament Square London SW1A 2JX Mail, Telephone Fax & E-mail Telephone orders 020 7219 3890 TSO General enquiries 020 7219 3890 PO Box 29, Norwich NR3 1GN Fax orders 020 7219 3866 Telephone orders/General enquiries: 0333 202 5077 Email: [email protected] Internet: Fax orders: 0333 202 5080 http://www.shop.parliament.uk Email: [email protected] Textphone: 0333 202 5077 TSO@Blackwell and other Accredited Agents 50380 Printed in the United Kingdom by The Stationery Office Ltd Contents Dr Rebecca Allen, Director, Education Datalab (EAB 01) Link Maker Systems (EAB 02) NSPCC (EAB 03) Acorn Care and Education (EAB 04) Catholic Education Service (EAB 05) Bishop of Ely, Chair of the National Society Council and Lead Bishop on Education in the House of Lords (EAB 06) Professor Becky Francis (EAB 07) British Humanist Association (EAB 08) PTA UK (EAB 09) Janet Downs (EAB 10) Christopher Curtis (EAB 11) National Secular Society (EAB 12) London Diocesan Board for Schools (EAB 13) Association of Teachers and Lecturers (EAB 14) Bill Griffiths (EAB 15) Pete Bentley (EAB 16) Adoption UK (EAB 17) Southwark Diocesan Board of Education (EAB 18) Professor Stephen Gorard (EAB 19) Kent Schools Hope (EAB 20) Group of Church of England diocesan boards of education (EAB 21) UNISON (EAB 22) NASUWT (EAB 23) Local Government Association (EAB 24) Peterborough Diocese Board of Education (EAB 25) National Governors’ Association (EAB 26) St Helens Council (EAB 27) National Union of Teachers (EAB 28) David McNaugh t (EAB 29) Independent Adoption Panel Chairs (EAB 30) Richard Harris (EAB 31) Parents Want a Say (EAB 32) Coram (EAB 33) Local Schools Network (EAB 34) Stockport Education Partnership Board (EAB 35) Education and Adoption Bill: Written evidence 3 Written evidence Written submission submitted by Dr Rebecca Allen, Director, Education Datalab (EAB 01) BACKGROUND ON AUTHOR AND ORGANISATION Education Datalab, part of the non-profit company FFT Education Ltd, produces independent research on education policy and practice. Dr Rebecca Allen is Director of Education Datalab, on leave from her academic position as Reader in Economics of Education at UCL Institute of Education. She is an expert in the analysis of large scale administrative and survey datasets, including the National Pupil Database and School Workforce Census. SUMMARY In this note I address the question of how coasting schools might best be defined. I argue that the social gradient in the distribution of inadequate Ofsted judgements has produced a perceived need to address underperformance of schools serving more affluent communities. Progress 8 cannot straightforwardly be used to identify coasting schools because it also displays a social gradient in its distribution. I offer two alternative metrics—contextual value-added and families of schools comparisons. I discuss how best to avoid the problem of volatility in small primary school performance. I offer some additional data metrics that should be used to determine which schools fall into the coasting schools group. The legislation on coasting schools is needed because Ofsted’s remit and guidance to inspectors is not well- aligned with public policy goals. 1. It is generally agreed that there are schools who provide a perfectly adequate education, but who could do a great deal better for the pupils they educate. They are far more likely to be situated in more affluent communities where there is a steady of supply of teachers willing to work at the school, where pupil mobility is low, and where the school does not have to routinely compensate for significant social dysfunction in families. 2. Ofsted does not judge these schools to be inadequate. This is because inspectors observe lessons and practices that are satisfactory or good, compared to the typical school they visit. The result is a very strong social skew in Ofsted judgements: — 2 out of 380 secondary schools with a free school meals (FSM6) proportion below 10% were most recently judged as inadequate; 45/353 schools with FSM6 over 50% were judged as inadequate. — 221/380 secondary schools with FSM6 below 10% were judged as outstanding; 53/353 schools with FSM6 over 50% were judged as outstanding. — 14/2493 primary schools with a free school meals (FSM6) proportion below 10% were judged as inadequate; 78/2915 schools with a free school meals (FSM6) proportion over 50% were judged as inadequate. — 664/2493 primary schools with FSM6 below 10% were judged as outstanding; 293/2915 schools with FSM6 over 50% were judged as outstanding. 3. This social skew in Ofsted judgements is not a priori wrong if we want the judgements to reflect the quality of teaching and learning they observe. But an alternative approach would be to ask Ofsted to judge whether schools are providing a high quality education, compared to other schools that operate in similar social circumstances. 4. This would lead to so-called “coasting” schools being judged as poor, since their exam performance, and the quality of observed practices would be poor, relative to schools inspectors have visited who have similar social circumstances. In my opinion, this modification of Ofsted’s remit and guidance would remove the need for new legislation to tackle coasting schools in the manner described in the draft Bill. A DEFINITION OF COASTING SCHOOLS BASED ON PROGRESS 8 REPLICATES THE SOCIAL GRADIENT PROBLEM OF OFSTED JUDGEMENTS 5. The social gradient in Ofsted judgements highlights how important it is that the data used to define a school as coasting is capable of identifying relative underperformance of more affluent schools. This implies that it must be based on some measure that takes into account the social setting of the school, rather than simple raw outcome measures. Assuming we follow the Secretary of State’s indication that it will be based on three years of data (e.g. a measure falling below a particular value in each of the last 3 years), there are three broad approaches worth discussing for secondary schools: Progress 8 6. Progress 8 will be used by Government as the main accountability metric from 2016 onwards. It judges how each pupil performs at GCSEs in maths, English, any 3 of the English Baccalaureate subjects (sciences, history or geography, languages, computer science), and any 3 other subjects by comparison with pupils who achieved the same Key Stage Two fine grade at age 11. Any school scoring below -0.5 (i.e. an average of half 4 Education and Adoption Bill: Written evidence a grade below expectations for each pupil) falls below the floor target. About 300 schools would have fallen below the floor in 2014. 7. Progress 8 would seem to be a good candidate to define coasting schools because it is being introduced into the accountability framework anyway and is well-aligned with a curriculum that Government would like schools to deliver. However, it is actually highly unsuitable, for two reasons. 8. First, it cannot be used for a number of years. To define coasting schools we need a lagged measure of performance. Schools cannot be held accountable for attainment on Progress 8 for the period of time where their curriculum may not have been well-aligned. This means coasting schools cannot be identified on this metric until Autumn 2018 (when data for 2016, 2017 and 2018 is available). And during its introduction it is important to bear in mind that the distribution of Progress 8 scores achieved by schools is likely to substantially alter as subject-entry patterns change and as GCSEs are re-scaled onto the 0-9 scores. 9. Second, Progress 8 displays exactly the same social gradient across schools that it is important to avoid.1 Schools in more affluent areas will, on average, achieve higher Progress 8 scores and so it would be impossible to use it to label them as coasting. To give an idea of the magnitude of the problem, in 2014:2 — Just 42/380 with FSM6 below 10% had a negative Progress 8 score. — 191/347 with FSM6 over 50% had a negative Progress 8 score. 10. It is not always obvious why the social gradient in Progress 8 should emerge, given that it accounts the pupil’s Key Stage Two prior attainment. There are many reasons why, of which the most important is that pupils in schools have clustering of social circumstances so that a low attaining pupil who attends a relatively affluent school is likely to have a supportive home environment and thus do better at GCSE than a low attaining pupil in a less affluent school. Contextual value-added 11. Contextual value-added (CVA) was a performance measure used in the latter part of the last Labour government that uses regression analysis to “remove” the social gradient in school performance, thus giving schools with affluent and deprived intakes an equal “chance” of doing well.3 The formula for doing so is complex for schools to understand because it includes measures of the child’s socio-demographic background and prior attainment and the school’s average socio-demographic make-up. 12. By forcing all schools to have an equal chance of doing well across the spectrum of school intake characteristics it makes an enormous assumption that there are equal numbers of effective schools serving deprived communities as there are serving affluent communities.