School Report Card
Parents' and pupils' perceptions
The White Paper Your child, your schools, our future has outlined new plans for school accountability. As part of these reforms a School Report Card will be piloted and introduced in mainstream primary and secondary schools in 2009 for introduction in 2011 - PRU/SEN schools etc will follow later.
It will:
- Be published annually
- Measure the performance of schools across a wide range of outcomes and assign an overall score
- Replace Achievement and Attainment Tables as the main source of central information on school performance
- cover six categories: pupil progress, pupil attainment, pupil wellbeing, pupil perceptions, parent perceptions and narrowing gaps in pupil performance.
Pupil progress will based on three measures: the proportions of pupils making the expected progress in English and mathematics and scores for contextualised value-added.
Pupil wellbeing - Ofsted is now using: attendance and persistent absence, permanent exclusions, post-16 progression, pupils who receive two hours of sport per week and the uptake of school lunches as quantitative indicators to measure wellbeing in its inspections. DCSF believes that data on permanent exclusions will not be appropriate for the School Report Card. It will consult on the robustness of post-16 progression measures. More generally, the DCSF will give 'careful consideration' as to whether these quantitative indicators should be used to provide a score for wellbeing.
Parent/pupils' perceptions - Ofsted will trial the use of parent and pupil surveys this year. DCSF will investigate how data could be used to derive indicators of parent and pupil satisfaction and pilot from September 2010.
Narrowing gaps in pupil performance - DCSF proposes a 'credit system' where schools with disadvantaged pupils will gain credit for improving the attainment of all pupils while narrowing gaps between disadvantaged and more advantaged groups. Disadvantaged pupils are defined as those belonging to the following groups for which local authorities are required to set targets under regulations which came into force on 31 December 2008:
- Black Caribbean
- White/Black Caribbean
- Black African and White/Black African
- Black Other
- Pakistani
- White Other
- Gypsy, Roma and Traveller of Irish Heritage
- Children eligible for free school meals
Other groups, especially looked after children, are recognised as being affected by disadvantage and will be considered for possible inclusion in the second year of piloting from September 2010.
Attainment indicators will be the same as those set out in target setting regulations. At Key Stage 2 they will be based on the proportion achieving Level 4 in both English and mathematics. At Key Stage 4 they will be based on the proportion achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A*-C including English and mathematics.
Special educational needs and disability - DCSF acknowledges that pupils with SEN are more likely to under-perform but is reluctant to separate out results for children with SEN as this could encourage schools to over- or under-identify pupils with SEN. DCSF will consider ways to reflect outcomes for this group in 2009. These measures will be tested in 2010.
Other categories - 17 further categories were suggested in the consultation including attendance, partnership working, behaviour and views of the school workforce. The first three will be included in the School Report Card but not necessarily as separate categories.
Scoring - the School Report Card will include a rating for each performance category based on a range of indicators.
Year-on-year comparisons - the School Report Card will show how overall performance and performance in each category has changed over time. This may be indicated by an arrow indicating trends over the previous year or previous three years. Options will be tested in the second year of piloting from September 2011.
Contextualisation
Performance on pupil progress will be contextualised to allow for a school's intake. But data on pupil attainment will not be.
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