Performance measures in England – NAHT’s policy positions
NAHT conducted an extensive review of our policy positions related to the publication and use of performance data.
You can read more about the process of the review and the results of a member survey which informed our new positions
As a result of this work, our National Executive has ratified the following revised policy positions and goals in this area:
- The current system can narrow, distort and corrupt the curriculum.
- Too great a reliance is being put by government on external tests, particularly for school accountability purposes.
- We believe that progress rather than attainment is a better performance measure for most schools - whilst by no means perfect, progress scores are a better reflection of the impact most schools have than attainment only measures.
- Published performance data alone is not an accurate measure of school effectiveness. Therefore, no users of such data including Ofsted, LAs, parents, the media and the public should consider it in isolation.
- NAHT believes that the publication of school and MAT level data on the “Compare School and College Performance” website should be ended. Data for proportionate and appropriate performance measures should be shared with schools and MATs. Only national, regional and LA level data should be made publicly available.
- While a “Compare School and College Performance” website exists to publish school and MAT level data, NAHT believes that:
- the data published on the performance data website has become excessive and complex and must be reduced to provide only useful and meaningful information for its intended users.
- the ’all schools and colleges comparison tables’ from the performance data website should be removed to avoid the damaging consequences of encouraging the public to compare institutions in league tables.
- simplistic comparisons of the published data being made by any stakeholders must be discouraged.
- year on year comparisons of data are overly simplistic. Therefore, the current published three-year average measures should be made more prominent on the CSCP website and their use expanded.
NAHT will continue to influence and proactively lobby government and other relevant parties to advance these key policy objectives.