Do schools make a difference?

Contextual Value Added

This is a measure of how well individual pupils do at Key Stage 2 / GCSE relative to their academic attainment when they began that stage of their education (ie at Key Stage 1 for Key Stage 2, and Key Stage 2 for GCSE). This way of assessing pupils' performance takes into account factors such as ethnic and social background.

As with the attainment charts , we look at what proportion of pupils falls into each of the national deciles for Contextual Value Added. Here is an example of an individual school:

What does the graph show? 

This school is a bit of a horror story. The girls are doing more or less OK and a few boys managed to do well, but over half the boys (58%) appear in the bottom twenty per cent of the national value added profile. This suggests a school with deep-seated problems.

It is generally worth looking at the percentage of pupils in the bottom value added decile or two - in a good school this percentage should be well below average.

A more usual profile might be:

Gently better than average - there is a shift towards the top end but disappointingly few hit the heights of the top decile. This is a comfortable (perhaps too comfortable?) comprehensive school in a middle-class area.

And here, as an example of the second chart on this page, is the value added profile for children with special educational needs at the same school:

A pleasing pileup at the top end. This is often the case once children’s special needs are recognised. Many underperform when young and, once they get the help and support they need, they gain lots of value added. This chart also shows a disappointing lump at the bottom end - the ones who just got worse.

How to tell if a school is good for both the brightest and the rest 

The second value added tab shows whether the school does well for three specific groups: extra bright children, ordinary mortals and for those who struggle academically. It shows the distribution of value added according to national quartiles. Bars in the average school are 25% each - further subdivided to show this pattern according to the quartile that each pupil’s score fell into at the earlier stage (Key Stage 2 for GCSE, and so on).

To take an example:

The blue section refer to children who were in the top quartile (top 25%) for the earlier test (e.g. the KS1 test for KS1 to KS2 value added). The red, green and yellow sections refer to the second, third and fourth quartiles. Within each coloured section, the bars show the percentage of pupils in each of the national value added quartiles. Where it appears, quartile U is for Unranked - pupils who for one reason or another have no value added score. An 'average' school would have all bars at 25% (the grey line)

This is the profile for JFS between Key Stage 2 and GCSE. You can see from this chart that it does wel...