Head’s Blog: How do Fearnhill’s GCSE results compare with other schools?

One of the most common means of assessing the effectiveness of a school is to review its exam grades. Lots of people feel that schools should be judged on many other factors before looking at their exam grades, and I would agree with this. But there is no escaping the reality that – all other things being equal – better schools tend to get better exam results.

Progress 8    So how is Fearnhill performing? The most important metric of a school’s exam performance is a measure called Progress 8. Frustratingly, Progress 8 for all schools does not become public knowledge until much later in the year. However, we have received our provisional score from the government: +0.27

Is +0.27 any good?   The short answer is yes. The average score for schools in England is 0.0. A very high performing school will have a Progress 8 score of +0.50 or higher and a very low performing school will have a Progress 8 score of -0.50 or lower. Therefore, students at Fearnhill make more progress in each GCSE than the  national average. It is the sixth consecutive year Fearnhill’s exam results have improved.

How does Progress 8 work?   Progress 8 compares the progress each student makes with the progress of students nationally who had the same Key Stage 2 SATs scores. Students with high SATs scores have their grades compared with all students nationally with high SATs scores. The same is true for those students with average or low SATs scores. A score of +0.27 means that, on    average, a Fearnhill student achieves 0.27 grades higher than the national average in every subject. Or to put that another way, the average Fearnhill student achieves a higher than expected grade for about 1 in 4 of the GCSEs they sit. When Fearnhill is then compared with similar schools (in terms of the demographic of students), our contextual Progress 8 score is above +0.60.

Is every student achieving well?  No. Just because the average Fearnhill student performs well does not mean that all students who attend Fearnhill make good progress. There are two key groups of students who make less progress: those with poor attendance (especially below 90%) and those who joined us after Key Stage 3. Missing school always has an impact on grades and the evidence shows that switching schools generally does not help students to achieve as well.

What does this all mean?  Ultimately you can have confidence that Fearnhill’s journey of improvement is continuing. Students with good attendance who attend Fearnhill from the start of Year 7 until the end of Year 11 usually make more progress than the majority of students nationally. This is good news and testament to the ongoing hard work of staff and students.

Tim Spencer, Headteacher