Data Management News October 2009

You will have all by now completed your data checking on the aatchecking site and so have you first idea of your CVA score for 2009 - I hope it is as good as you hoped. I have been a little slow in writing to you this term and there is a lot to catch up on. Data and the inspection framework Firstly we have a new Inspection regime that has adjusted the way attainment, progress and achievement are assessed.  There have been some subtle changes in the way OFSTED will be judging Attainment.  The likely effect of this is that more schools will be judged as having High attainment (Grade 1), but conversely more will be judged as having Low attainment (Grade 4). Inspectors will look at test or exam results for the oldest year group in the school (Y2 in an infant school, Y6 in primary and Y11 in secondary) over the last three years.  New grade descriptors used by inspectors suggest that if the large majority (>65%) of key measures have been sig+ for this period then the judgement is likely to be of High Attainment.  In other words, if you have green  in your RAISE report for your Year 6 test results or GCSE exam results for most of this three-year period then you should evaluate Attainment in your SEF as High.  Unfortunately the converse will also be the case in that three years of sig- or blue should lead to an evaluation of Low Attainment.  Further details on this can be found in the following two documents on the Ofsted website: The Evaluation Schedule for Schools Attainment - Supplementary guidance for inspectors Attainment is a key part of the inspection judgement - Pupils' achievement and the extent to which they enjoy their learning.  Progress measures are another contributory factor here, and the most important when it comes to making the judgement about achievement. Current guidance indicates that three-year patterns will be looked at, but there has been nothing to change the thinking that Outstanding Progress is when a school is consistently in the top 10% in its CVA. Conversely, Inadequate Progress is generally when a school is consistently in the bottom 10%. However, caution is needed here and these should only be used as a rough guide. Evidence on the extent to which the pupils enjoy their learning will come largely from lesson observations. New to RAISEonline KS1 & KS2 data due out in early November, possibly just after half term. KS4 should not be far behind and might be with us in mid November. Few changes to Primary data tables and graphs, the biggest challenge will be to interpret them for the new SEF and inspection approach. KS4 CVA has changed as you may have seen from the aatchecking site. It now uses the best 8 GCSEs and adds on a Maths and English bonus to get the exit point for the CVA calculation. That means the capped score is calculated for each pupil and then their English and Maths points scores are added to it (whether or not they were included in the best 8!). The new KS4 ready reckoner 2009 is available together with a paper identifying the percentile ranks for 2009 - they are on the aatchecking site under documents. KS4 also has a new table showing pupil progress in English and Maths from KS2 to KS4 - it shows the percentage achieving expected progress (3 levels across the 2 key stages). The school forward estimates in secondary have also been adjusted for the demise of KS3 data and these are now based on the KS2 prior attainment of the cohort. Target setting in secondary has also been amended for the better by also basing the projects from the pupil's KS2 results. As you know, we at Cocentra provide a range of workshops and also a RAISE analysis service, should you wish to have a workshop on either the new inspection regime or RAISE or indeed to take advantage of the RAISE Awareness analysis service please email me on andy.best@cocentra.com or call me on 07917 080201. Information on these services can be found on our website.  We hope you have found this information useful. We are always happy to hear from you, if you have any comments regarding this newsletter or you have anything you would like to contribute to future newsletters please email caroline.smyth@cocentra.com.