Schools' GCSE results to be marked on 'Attainment 8'

In 2019, Education, Sport & Culture started to publish Attainment 8 scores alongside the previous ‘gold standard’ of five grades at A* to C, or 9 to 4, as they have now been re-styled.

ESC is now dropping the old measure, and this summer will be the first in which the five 9-4s statistic will not be published.

It said that Attainment 8 was a better reflection of the achievement of all students and allowed results to be properly compared with those in Jersey and England.

‘The publication of Attainment 8 has been incredibly helpful in recent years. At the time of its introduction we agreed we would phase out the old statistics and that time has come,’ said Clare Sealy, head of education improvement.

‘We will be ensuring this year’s results are still comparable with recent years and are confident that the new measures paint a more accurate picture of a cohort’s successes.’

ESC has said that the new performance measures are similar, but not identical, to those used in England, and that they bring several benefits.

Under Attainment 8 there is an incentive to focus on performance in eight subjects rather than five. Every child contributes equally to a school’s score. Students improving from the equivalent of G to F, or from D to C, or from A to A*, all impact the new measurement equally.

‘Attainment 8 is a way of looking at how well a school has done for all of its students in a broad range of measures,’ said Ms Sealy.

‘It takes the best eight of a student’s performances in GCSEs, with English and maths counting double in that calculation to recognise the significance of those areas of learning.

‘A formula then calculates the Attainment 8 score for the school. And it’s really important to say that, while individual children’s scores are used in the calculation, it’s only a school score that comes out.’

Other additional indicators will be published to provide further comparisons with other jurisdictions.

These include the percentage of students obtaining grades 4 or 5 in both English and maths and, for States schools only, the percentage of results for each of the nine grades.

‘This will give four different spotlights,’ said Ms Sealy.

‘Each one of them by itself tells only a partial story, but if you have all four, the intersection of those four gives you a much more meaningful and accurate way of thinking about how things are going.’

Liz Coffey, executive principal of the Secondary Schools Partnership, said the previous system had encouraged schools to focus disproportionately on students near the C-D grade borderline.

‘It incentivised schools on getting as many students up to C grade. The unintended consequence of that was that it potentially put a cap on achievement,’ she said.

‘The system embedded unintentionally perverse incentives. And with children at the other end of the spectrum, there was less incentive really to put effort into them.

‘I use the analogy of fleas in a jar. If you put a lid on the jar, the fleas jump as high as the lid. Take the lid off, they jump as high as they can.’

. This year’s GCSE results will be published on Thursday 24 August.