A Cambridgeshire school has been listed among the top 50 schools in England in a new league table. The ‘Fairer Schools’ index gives an insight into the places where teachers are making the biggest difference in classrooms.
Researchers have measured every school in the country against a series of additional performance metrics to improve on official Department for Education (DfE) league tables. The metrics remove some of the built-in bias against secondary schools teaching children from deprived areas.
The results – revealed exclusively by the Mirror – show the schools where teachers are beating the odds to make the greatest positive impact on pupils up to the age of 16. The study highlights dozens of schools across England which climbed hundreds of places up the rankings when additional factors such as pupil demographics were considered.
Chesterton Community College was the only Cambridgeshire secondary school that made it into the top 50 schools across England, ranking at number 31. Other highly-ranked schools in Cambridgeshire included Trumpington Community College, which was ranked 101, and Soham Village College, ranked at 143.
Use this interactive tool to see how other schools in Cambridgeshire have performed:
For many years the Government’s method of evaluating secondary school performance, known as the Progress 8 measure, has not considered factors including the number of children from poorer backgrounds at each school. Critics say not taking these factors into account risks hiding systemic inequalities and providing potentially misleading conclusions about school performance.
For example, regions like the North East see their schools unfairly marked down because the areas they serve are not taken into account. There are growing calls for the new Labour government to provide that crucial context.
Ofsted is reported to be considering a new range of measurements for schools that will better inform parents. The Fairer Schools Index goes some way to redress the ‘false narrative’ of a North/South divide in Government league tables.
The index by the University of Bristol adjusts for variables including pupil demographics, ethnicity, and deprivation. The results show the real difference that the best schools make rather than pretending every school has an identical intake with the same socio-economic status and background.
The Fairer Schools Index has been highlighted by the campaign group Northern Powerhouse Partnership as it calls for a better way of evaluating schools in different areas of the country. Across the North of England, there are 233 schools out of 928 in the region which move up at least one band to ‘average’ or better as a result of applying the fairer measurements.
‘We must demand the best for every child’
Henri Murison, Chief Executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: “The Fairer Schools Index exposes the shortcomings of Progress 8 being used to measure any school’s performance on its own. By failing to account for a number of different variables related to pupils’ backgrounds, the last government labelled many schools in areas like the North East of England as under-performing while failing to account for demographic differences in helping drive higher outcomes in London schools.
“We are advocating for the adoption of a value-added measure side by side with the current, unadjusted data. This will allow us to recognise better those schools that do the most for those children from backgrounds too often let down in modern Britain.
“We must demand the best for every child. Those schools that beat the odds stacked against their pupils should be recognised as being high performing, and that will drive down the disadvantage gap over the decade to come and reduce the gaps which exist across and between parts of England today.”
The Fairer Schools Index shows that teachers are making a big difference to children growing up in England’s most deprived areas. Red House Academy in Sunderland is the highest climber – previously ranked “below average” at 2,720 out of 3,259 schools in the Department for Education’s tables. Using the index, it climbs 1,919 places to be ranked as “average” in 801st position.
And Jarrow School in South Tyneside jumps from 2,104 in the DfE rankings to 590 when using the index. Its headteacher Paul Atkinson said: “There’s a bigger story to tell in every school. It’s not just about results. Our students come from some of the most deprived areas of the country.
“About 33 percent of our students are diagnosed with Special Education Needs and Disabilities and 48 percent are on free school meals. We would love to have the best outcomes in the UK but in terms of our context, is that realistic?
“You’ve got to aspire to high results, but you’ve got to take into consideration starting points as well. I think it’s critical to take that into account when evaluating schools, so I welcome the Fairer Schools Index.”
‘Staff should be praised for the hard work that they do’
Matt Tate is the headteacher of Hartsdown Academy, which climbed 1,656 places from its DfE position of 2,500 to 894, thanks to the Fairer Schools Index. It puts the school in Margate, Kent, where 37 languages are spoken and 65 percent of pupils are on free school meals, in the top 30 percent in the country.
Mr Tate said: “The majority of our students come from significantly deprived areas of the country. Last year, in Year 11, 30 percent of them didn’t start with us in Year 7 because their accommodation and other things were unstable.” When Mr Tate took over in 2016, Hartsdown was one of the lowest performing schools in the country, with high rates of violence and kids smoking in the corridor. But that has all changed now.
“Last year, we were the 11th most-improved school in the country,” Mr Tate said. “We’ve gone from one of highest exclusion schools in the country to zero exclusions now in about five years.” A key challenge has been tackling poor literacy. Kids arrive at Hartsdown Academy with an average reading age of eight.
The school implemented an International Baccalaureate programme, in which students stay in one classroom for 20 hours of the week with one person teaching 10 hours of literacy and another teaching 10 hours of numeracy. “They still spend five hours on other subjects but because they’ve got two teachers who know them really well, they really push them,” Mr Tate explained.
“We see an average of 18 months’ reading progress in a year. We’re all about setting high standards and intentions combined with expert care and support.”
Of the Fairer Schools Index, he added: “I’m really pleased this seems to be the direction of travel for evaluating schools. Our children need good results to have a great future, so outcomes have to be a key measure. But this should be looked at alongside a more contextual measure.
“The reality is we have a very complex cohort that brings needs and issues and when you take that into account, I think our staff should be praised for the hard work that they do, rather than being compared with a leafy suburban school with a different context.”