Every September, secondary schools welcome a new cohort of pupils armed with timetables, planners and ambitions for the years ahead.
Alongside them arrives something equally valuable, yet too often overlooked: their KS2 SATs data.
Most schools will review scaled scores.
Some will analyse attainment groups.
Others will invest time in baseline assessments to build an initial picture of their new Year 7 intake.
The strongest secondary schools do something far more powerful.
They go beyond the headline figures to understand them.
The Conversation has Shifted.
At a time when schools are expected to demonstrate a clear understanding of their pupils' starting points, the ability to articulate what learners know, where gaps exist, and how the curriculum responds has never been more important.
The question is no longer:
"What score did they achieve?"
The question is now...
"What does that score tell us about the learner and what are you doing about it?"
Why Baseline Assessments Don't Always Provide the Full Picture
For many pupils, the first weeks of secondary school...
Schools today have access to more data than ever before.
Assessment scores, attendance figures, behaviour records, pupil progress measures, intervention tracking, benchmarking reports, and survey responses can provide a wealth of information. Yet having data is not the same as using it effectively.
The most successful schools understand a fundamental truth:
The best schools don't just collect data.
They use it.
The biggest difference between good and great schools is often not the quantity of data they hold, but how they turn that information into meaningful action.
Moving Beyond Data Collection
Collecting data has become routine in education. Every assessment, test, and observation generates another set of numbers that can be stored, analysed, and reported.
However, data in isolation tells us very little.
A pupil scoring 65% on a test provides a headline figure, but it doesn't explain what they understand, where misconceptions exist, or what support they need next. Looking only at overall scores can leave crucial insights hidden beneath the surface.
This is where effective schools take...
Recently, we surveyed secondary schools up and down the country asking about Transition.
It seems like every school and area has a different way of working.
Most focus first on getting to know their pupils with activity days in school or a mock timetable.
Some give immediate tests. It seems there is not a clear way for everyone to follow.
But this is really important.
But what about academic transition?
Stalled Progress at Key Stage 3
A recent Ofsted report stated..
"the transition to secondary is too often poorly managed and teaching fails to build on the gains pupils have made in primary school. Inspectors have found that pupils often leave primary school with good literacy and numeracy skills, confident and eager to learn, but their progress then stalls when they start secondary school."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/too-many-students-let-down-in-early-stages-of-secondary-school
The fact is that the importance of a good start to secondary school education cannot be overstated. Pupils need to enjoy school and get involved with the many subjects to choose...
When working within cycling both at the 2012 Olympics and onwards with the SKY or INEOS racing team, Sir Dave Brailsford employs a significant principal in all he does.
The 1% principal is based on the small changes that TOGETHER make a big change.
As Brailsford said, Speaking to the BBC…
“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of, that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.
There’s fitness and conditioning, of course, but there are other things that might seem on the periphery, like sleeping in the right position, having the same pillow when you are away and training in different places. They’re tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34247629
He believed that if it were possible to make a 1% improvement in a whole host of areas, the cumulative gains would end...
How well is your school using the additional funding for pupil premium and Year 7 Catch up?
Ofsted will be looking for how you are supporting your new Year 7.
The 2019 Ofsted Inspection Handbook says:
In evaluating progress in literacy and mathematics, inspectors will take into account the progress of those for whom the Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium provides support.
[In Outstanding schools,] Governors systematically challenge senior leaders so that the effective deployment of … Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium … secures excellent outcomes for pupils.
In Outstanding Schools..
The following quotes are taken from Ofsted Inspection Reports of Outstanding secondary and all-through schools in 2018/19:
Leaders use additional funding very effectively for disadvantaged pupils and those in Year 7 who need extra help to catch up with others. … Year 7 pupils who join the school with low starting points are provided with targeted support to improve their reading.
Pupils benefit from work that closely matches their abilities and...
A Guide to Progress 8
This guide is designed to help alleviate the confusion between the different bandings.
It is also available as a video on our YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/9xTPAs20BeA
Progress 8 Bandings
In early 2017 the DfE categorised schools into 5 different Progress Bandings:
But it is easy to get things wrong.
BBC News website
The BBC News website did so on 16 April 2019, when it said:
A school's performance is measured through pupils' progress, called Progress 8, via a scoring system of between -1 and 1, with the average being 0.A score lower than 0 is recognised as not achieving the minimum standard expected by the government, with -1 being well below average.
There are three things are wrong with these two sentences:
Firstly, Progress 8 is not a scoring system of between -1 and 1. There are no such arbitrary limits, and in 2018 there are 70 mainstream schools with a Progress 8 score below -1, and 50 schools above +1.A score...
