What are 'Progress 8' scores? The government's measure for rating secondary school performance explained

• The government publishes performance data for state-funded schools each year.
• Most secondary schools are ranked based on a unique measure, known as a ‘Progress 8’ score.
• It compares how students have performed in their most recent exams, usually GCSEs, to how their primary school academic peers did.
• But not all students are included in a school’s final score - and a score of zero is not a bad thing.

School league tables are a valuable source of information to parents, especially around the time of that all-too-crucial transition from primary school to secondary school.

Secondary school will see your child through their GCSE exams and potentially even their A Levels, and the education they receive there will be of huge importance to the rest of their lives. But as we all know, grades alone don’t determine a school’s worth - which is why the official government measure for ranking secondary schools is so much better.

England’s primary schools are typically ranked in league tables based on the percentage of their Year 6 pupils who sat their SATs - or Standard Assessment Tests - and were found to be working at the expected standard for reading, writing, and maths. Sixth forms, on the other hand, are usually ranked based on the average amount of points students scored on their A Levels.

But secondary schools are rated based on their ‘Progress 8’ score, a slightly more complex measure. What exactly is it, and how is it calculated? Here’s what you need to know:

How are secondary schools ranked - and how is it calculated?

The Department for Education publishes performance tables each year for state-funded maintained schools and academies in England, while Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland typically publish their own data.

These tables measure and rank primary schools, secondary schools, and sixth forms separately. This data is able to be sorted by a number of different metrics, and anyone is able to access it for free - and even sort schools based on other factors, like local authority area.

The default ranking method for secondary schools, and the key metric used in many league table calculations, is their ‘Progress 8’ score. This is a way of measuring the progress that pupils make from the end of key stage 2, the last year of primary school, to the end of key stage 4 - when they sit their GCSEs.

The Department for Education says that this score is calculated by looking at a school’s pupils’ scores in up to eight of their most recent qualifications, split into four categories. These categories are English; Maths (both double-weighted in the final score to reflect their importance); science, computer science, history, geography, and languages; and finally, any other three qualifications. This is usually based on GCSE results.

These grades are compared to the national average score of pupils in England who performed similarly in their Year 6 SATs. SATs measure performance in similar areas, including English (reading, writing, grammar, punctuation, and spelling), maths (basic arithmetic and reasoning), and science.

Schools are then given an overall Progress 8 score. For most schools, this will be a decimal figure between -1 and 1. A score of around zero is not considered bad, with zero actually being the average score of all pupils in a given school year.

A grade of 1 means that pupils at that school are, on average, achieving one grade higher in each qualification than their peers. This is why in some cases, schools where pupils have performed exceptionally well in their GCSEs or other, similar qualifications can have even higher scores. On that same note, a score of -1 means that pupils are, on average, achieving one grade lower than similar students.

Schools with a score of -0.5 or less are considered not to be meeting the government’s minimum standards, the department explains, and may come under “increased scrutiny” from Ofsted inspectors. Scores of 0.5 and above, on the other hand, are considered to be performing ‘well above average’, the highest band schools can be sorted into.

Some students and scores are actually excluded from a school’s overall results, in the interests of being fair. Pupils who have no key stage 2 results for example - such as those who have come from a private school or have moved from overseas - are not included in the Progress 8 measure. If just one or two pupils have extremely negative progress scores that disproportionately drag their school’s overall average down, it will be replaced with an adjusted score.

It is worth noting that Progress 8 might not be the most accurate measurement for specialty schools that start educating pupils part way through the five-year period covered by the score. If you also compare schools based on other league tables besides the official Department for Education performance rankings, they may also take other things into account too. You should always check what they say about the metric they use, so that you fully understand how they are ranking schools.

What do you think about how the government measures secondary school performance? Have your say and make your voice heard by leaving a comment below.