The Department for Education explored alternative options but concluded that there was ‘no replacement’ for Progress 8 measures.
The Department for Education explored alternative options but concluded that there was ‘no replacement’ for Progress 8 measures.
The government has confirmed there will be no Progressive 8 replacements for the next two years due to a shortage of SAT data due to the pandemic.
The Department for Education said it had explored alternative options to produce measures of progress across key stages 2024-25 and 2025-26.
But officials concluded there was “no replacement” for the Progress 8 bill.
Instead, it will continue to “publish the remaining headline achievement, entry and destination measures and return to publishing time series”.
However, they will continue to provide the most recent Progressive 8s for 2023-24 and 2022-23.
The cancellation of the Primary SAT in 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to the pandemic means there will be no key stage 2 pre-attainment data to calculate the Progress 8 measure for that cohort.
The DfE has said it plans to return to Progress 8 in 2026-27, when key stage 2 data becomes available again.
Ofsted will continue to consider a range of data provided in inspection data summary reports, including school cohorts. “No single piece of data can determine the outcome of an Ofsted judgment”.
Grading will continue as normal next summer.
Tom Middlehurst, qualifications expert at the ASCL Association of School Leaders, said this was the “least bad” approach, adding: “But this is far from ideal and means schools will have to be assessed on report cards on test attainment regardless of their circumstances. Schools where progress is improving will feel particularly challenged.
“It is a missed opportunity to rethink scorecards and why we need to reform our current accountability measures to encompass a wider range of information that tells parents more about a school than test results. I emphasize it.”