The results of this summer’s key stage two tests in England are a Christmas confection of good tidings for some and a cause of indigestion for others. Headteachers’ warnings that the new tests of reading, writing and maths were much harder than the previous versions have been borne out by the raw numbers: last year 80% of pupils reached what was deemed to be a satisfactory standard in all three subjects, but this time just 53% did.
Under the old system, that would have been a Christmas holiday disaster. More than two-thirds of primary schools scored below the government’s floor standard of 65%, meaning thousands of schools would have been under threat of sanction.
Luckily, this year there was a gift from the DfE: a new measure that effectively saved most of them, based on the progress achieved by pupils.
By making the progress levels relatively mild – in fact, negative numbers compared with national outcomes – the DfE defanged the new tests from the worst potential outcomes. Perhaps ministers were worried that the tougher tests could backfire, as the headline results suggest they might have done. To have had two out of every three primary schools below the floor standards would have made a mockery of the process.
And overall it is an improvement in assessment, because measuring progress made by children from different starting points is fairer and more accurate than a blunt pass rate measure of success.
It’s not that schools have got worse. As the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) noted, it’s that the goalposts have moved, and teachers have been working hard to follow them.
The DfE’s Santa had another present tucked away that mitigated the fallout further. There were 14,930 state-funded mainstream primary schools with key stage two results in 2016, but only 13,661 were classed by the DfE as eligible for ranking, for various reasons, which may have saved around 500 mainly small schools from failing its floor standards.
The end result is that despite a massive shift in exam difficulty, after a new curriculum was introduced two years earlier, fewer schools have been deemed to be below the government’s floor targets than was the case previously – 665 in 2016, compared with 768 in 2014.
What the national statistics show is a shift in the distribution of school scores, leaving room for improvement. All new testing regimes take several years to settle down as schools and teachers adjust to new demands.
Underneath the national headlines are signs that disadvantaged children struggled under the new testing regime: just 35% of children on free school meals (FSM) reached the expected standards, compared with 57% of their better-off peers. Using the DfE’s wider disadvantage index – which encompasses a third of all 11-year-olds – however, there was a slight closing of the gap.
More disappointingly, children on FSM showed markedly slower progress than others. And fewer than 2% of FSM and disadvantaged pupils managed to score well enough to reach the DfE’s “higher standard” across the three subjects.
Girls once again did better than boys: 57% of girls achieved the expected standard in all three areas, compared with 50% of boys. The eight percentage point gap was larger than the six percentage point gap on the more generous measure used in the previous two years.
So while many school leaders – and DfE officials – may be breathing sighs of relief, the new tests have exposed the work that needs to continue. As Julie McCulloch of ASCL said: “Against this background, schools, teachers and pupils have performed miracles and deserve great credit.”
