School tables to reflect poverty

By Gary Eason Education editor, BBC News website

The new measure takes no account of school funding

Discontent is emerging over changes to schools' ratings that take account of pupils' poverty and ethnicity.

The standing of schools in England will be boosted in attainment tables and Ofsted reports if they have the sort of children who tend not to get good results.

The government says its new "contextual value added" rating is fairer, taking in factors outside schools' control.

Some head teachers agree but others see the underlying methodology as being flawed, and even offensive.

'Too crude'

The government introduced a version of "value added" scoring two years ago.

FACTORS IN CVA prior attainment gender special educational needs first language ethnicity deprivation pupil mobility age an 'in care' indicator average and range of prior attainment within school

It was felt to be better than just having the raw results.

But criticism remained that the value added measure was too crude.

The National Audit Office, for example, said social and economic deprivation could and should be taken into account.

Ministers agreed a "more sophisticated" measure was needed and have conducted a pilot version of contextual value added (CVA) data in the secondary school attainment tables, involving 430 schools.

Transformation

They intend publishing CVA figures for all secondary schools in the 2006 tables and for primary schools a year later.

The inspectorate, Ofsted, is now using CVA - though until a final version has been developed this is only to "inform" judgements of schools' effectiveness based on other evidence.

Some schools in the pilot saw their ratings transformed.

Campion Catholic High School in Liverpool soared from a value added score of 920.2 to a CVA score of 1015.

Others - notably the grammar schools - lost out. Wolverhampton Girls' High for example dropped from 1033 to 992.3.

And for some, scores changed little.

'Flawed concept'

But there are claims that the underlying methodology is suspect.

Bury Church of England High School in Lancashire - not one of the pilot schools - is a humanities specialist with a proud Christian ethos, good exam results and a very good Ofsted report.

The head teacher, Philip Grady, told the BBC News website he fully appreciated the need to move away from the former crude evaluation of school effectiveness.

But he said CVA was based on "an entirely flawed concept":

• Pupils' Key Stage 2 results already reflect their ethnicity, socio-economic background and gender, so there is no justification for factoring these in again to explain progress to Key Stage 4

• CVA currently misses out one of the most influential factors in a school's context: funding

  "There is huge variation in the per-pupil funding allocated to schools and it is inconceivable that such a basic influence on a school's performance should have been omitted from the CVA calculation," he said.

  "Alternatively, since the justification for this widely varying per pupil funding is the level of deprivation and the proportion of ethnic minority pupils in schools' intake, the funding and the context cancel each other out, and therefore neither should be taken into account."

• Given that a pupil may be entitled to free school meals in Year 7 but no longer be entitled by Year 11, or vice versa, how it is possible to track such a varying factor and its effect on their performance over five years?

• CVA implies we have lower expectations of the children of ethnic minority families, socio-economically less favoured children and boys in general

  "This is a very dangerous and indeed offensive implication to make," Mr Grady said.

Social circumstances

The new measure also marks a reversal in the government's attitude.

In 2000 the then education secretary, David Blunkett, said of the worst-performing schools: "There are cynics who say that school performance is all about socio-economics and the areas these schools are located in.

"No child is pre-ordained by class or by gender or by ethnic group or by their home to fail."

He pointed out that more than 200 schools on the list of underachievers had fewer than 35% of pupils on free school meals - whereas 175 with more than 35% on free school meals nevertheless had far better GCSE results.

"It is nothing like as simple as saying social circumstances determines performance," he said.

It's a much more accurate picture of what we are doing Dr Bob Rogers Acting head teacher

It has a published value added score of 934.3, which is in the bottom 5% nationally.

But on the new CVA measure this rises to 990.8 - broadly average.

"It's a much more accurate picture of what we are doing," said the acting head, Bob Rogers.

Many of the school's pupils are drawn from what Ofsted calls "areas of high social disadvantage".

"So it more accurately reflects the sort of children we have," Dr Rogers said.

"It's very delicate to talk about because parents don't like it."

He rejects any idea that adjusting for children's backgrounds is, in effect, expecting certain children to fail.

He says everything the school does is geared towards ameliorating the sorts of problems they have.

The Department for Education and Skills stressed that CVA in its current form was a pilot.

People's responses - which were welcome - were being evaluated.

"We will decide the best way forward after that," a spokesman said.

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