How well did your school do?

Why the exam PDFs are an invaluable resource 

Is 75% a good mark? Raw statistics and league table positions can be meaningless. Among other things, they do not tell you how able the children were on entry or how much difference the school has made to the performance of the youngsters in their care.

It's easy to find out more - just read on...

A sample Exam File at KS2

Belleville Primary School - How well are they doing?

Take as an example the KS2 PDF for a West London primary school:

Key Stage 2 Exams analysis PDF for Belleville Primary School .

Belleville Primary school

Here you have

1.  The title page -  As it says, "use this report to prompt questions more than to reach conclusions"
   
2. Contact details and basic information 
3. Key indicators - As published on our web page for the school: 

1. Boys' performance compared with girls. At primary schools in England the common experience is that girls do better than boys (a matter perhaps of speed of development, attitude to work, the style of the curriculum and teaching, or all three). You'd not want to see this under performance get out of hand, so if the figure is more than 5% worse you might raise an eyebrow. Here boys do better than girls - unusual, and worth exploring the reasons for it with the school.

    

2. Is the school expanding or shrinking? Schools with falling rolls can be difficult to manage, as the costs of reorganisation and redundant overheads eat cash, and morale sinks. In independent schools they may indicate an impending financial crisis. They may sometimes be a sign of parental dissatisfaction. Fast rising rolls may impose management strain too. Here the rolls have risen by about 8% annually - a good head, and increasing popularity.

    

3. Do bright children do well here? It's often a criticism of state schools that they neglect the bright, who inconveniently want to go faster than the rest of the class. This indicator looks at the average value added between KS1 and KS2 for children who are in the top quartile (top 25%) nationally at KS1. It is statistically hard for these children to score well on value added, because the KS2 scale stops at level 5 and so achievements beyond that (and the brightest children may be some way beyond that) are not recognised in the figures. A positive score is a good score - and Belleville does very nicely, thankyou.

    

4. Do children with SEN do well here? How does the school treat the 20% or so of children who display some particular difficulty in learning? A positive score here is a good sign for teaching generally, as it usually means that the school pays attention to every child's particular needs.

    

5. What percentage of children do really well? The percentage reaching level 5 (the level that you would expect almost every child to reach in a mainstream private school). For a state school, what matters is that there is a high enough percentage reaching this level to set expectations for the school generally; above that social segregation is often the reason for high scores. Belleville has a good score for a city school.

    

6. KS2 additional indicators

   1. Boys' value added relative to girls. An alternative look at 3.1 above: are boys falling behind between KS1 and KS2, or catching up? At Belleville the boys are falling behind,though so slightly that it's probably just a statistical quirk. Combined with 3.1, this suggests to me that there may be some other school nearby that is more attractive to the parents of precocious girls.

       

   2. Are there a good number of bright children here? A supplement to 3.5 above: the average number reaching level 5 in each year. If there are a good number in the school, then there's a group with which your bright child may be able to identify.

       

   3. Average overall value added. Remember that half of all schools are bound, as a matter of mathematics, to score below 0: only worry if a school is well into the red.

       

   4. What percentage of pupils are up to speed for secondary school? The percentage who reach level 4 at KS2: below this, and a child may well have trouble adjusting to the demands of secondary school.

       

   5. What percentage of pupils do really badly? The percentage of pupils in the lowest value added quartile (bottom 25%). There will always be some - indeed on average there will be 25% - but I'd always look for a school which was chasing up the lost sheep. Belleville scores 15% - nice.

    

7. Rankings

   Where the school sits nationally on a range of measures. Though the Good Schools Guide is no follower of league tables, it helps to have an idea of where a school sits in the national scheme of things. Belleville is generally about a third from the top - fine, but perhaps absence rates are something to ask about?

    

8. Spread of attainment.

   1. How many pupils? The first thing to note is the chart at the top right of the page showing the average number of pupils in each year group. The larger the group, the more reliable the statistics. Belleville has 70 in each year, so on average each bar in the charts below will contain about 10 pupils (70 x 3 years / 20 bars). So a couple of pupils being the other side of a notional dividing point between bars would lead to a bar being almost a quarter larger or smaller. In these circumstances look at the overall pattern, and not too much at the detail of individual bars.

       

   2. What's the academic profile of boys and girls at age 7? Gives an idea of the academic profile early on in school life - in Belleville's case fairly average though with an above average cohort of high-performing children.

       

   3. What's the academic profile of boys and girls at the end of key stage 2? The same chart 4 years on. Belleville's chart has a happy weighting to the left - though on examination it appears that the girls are doing better than the boys. The value added data (see below) that the government issues is adjusted for all sorts of outside factors (wealth, race etc) here you are looking at the raw test scores data.

       

9. Spread of attainment for children with SEN

   1. The chart at the top right shows the balance of SEN levels in the school. Bar 1 is the most able, bar 10 the least able. It highlights that children of all abilities have SEN but there are substantially more in the bottom 10% than the top. 

       

      1. Statemented. Requires substantial additional help and intervention funded directly by the local authority. About 2% of pupils nationally - Belleville is average.
      2. School Action Plus. Requires substantial additional help and intervention from a source other than the classroom teacher, funded by the school. About 10% of pupils nationally.
      3. School Action. Requires additional help funded by the school. About 10% of pupils nationally.
      4. Has no SEN. Belleville is average on all these percentages. Differing practice in some local authorities can lead to notably different percentages from the national averages.

       

   2. What is the spread of achievement at key stage 1 for children with SEN? Most special educational needs should have been spotted by staff at age 7. You should expect to see a chunk of SEN children at the bottom of the scale - those who are already falling behind - but I always hope to see a good few at the top of the achievement scale too: this means that the school is picking up those whose difficulties will only bite on their performance later on, when their ability to compensate runs out.

       

   3. What's the spread of achievement at key stage 2 for children with SEN. 4 years on - what you hope not to see is a pile-up at the right hand end of the chart.

       

10. Spread of value added results by gender and SEN.

    1. How well are boys and girls doing between key stage 1 and key stage 2? Shows the percentage of children in each national decile for value added scores. At Belleville there's a fairly level profile, a bit thin at the very top but well weighted to the top end - as the indicators above show.

        

    2. How well are children with special educational needs doing? The national profile here is U shaped - a third escaping from their difficulties and shining, a third crashing, and a third spread out inbetween. The Belleville profile is a very nice one - most SEN children succeed here, very few who crash (there are always a few who don't blossom).

        

11. How value added varies with key stage 1 achievement

    This chart splits the children into four groups according to which KS1 national quartile their results fall into, and then looks at the value added profile for each group. For Belleville:

     

    1. The top group (blue) does well. It's no great problem that the proportion of them in the top value added quartile is below 25% - this is true nationally, and is a result of KS2 scores being capped at level 5.
    2. The second group (red) does well too.
    3. The third group (green) seems a bit below average.
    4. The fourth group (yellow) shows an above average proportion doing very well. This and the green profile might, if I felt that my child was below average but without a special educational need, lead me to explore with the school whether such children were receiving the same attention as the rest. A good school should have lots of internal reports and information that will throw light on questions like this.

     How well do children do in:

12. English?

    The KS2 tests cover 3 subjects only, so this and the next 2 pages gives you some detail on how children do in each of them. Belleville shows nothing much to worry about - gently above average, most falling below level 4 identified as having SEN and so receiving extra help, but plenty of SEN children doing well too.

     

13. Maths

    There's a problem here - far too many children only reaching level 3.

     

14. Science

    All's well.

     Are results improving?

15. English

    The 5-year trend of the percentage reaching levels 4 and 5. Belleville shows a very nice trend, with notable improvement at the top end in the last 2 years. Level 5 percentages often fluctuate quite a bit - much more dependent on the intake than level 4.

     

16. Maths

    Another light on the problems. No sign of long-term improvement at level 4, though a good increase at level 5 - an aspect of bright kids receiving more attention that average ones, perhaps? Maths problems have persisted longer than they ought - ask the school what's being done about it.

     

17. Science

    No signs of improvement, but consistently good. May benefit from being given a boost once maths teaching is on track.

     

18. Trends in school roll

    Enlarges on the indicator above, and helps you understand what's happening. Belleville shows a steady growth, as its reputation spreads. Absence is improving if still above average - worth asking why.

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