Relationship between KS2APS and Progress 8

Progress 8 is a secondary school performance measure, designed to compare all of a schools’ pupils’ results with those of other pupils with a similar prior attainment. (Department for Education (DfE), 2016).

Since Progress 8 was an attempt to address the perceived unfairness of the use of threshold measures, I wanted to explore the nature of the relationship between schools’ Key Stage 2 Average Point Score (for the cohort when they entered secondary education) and the Mean Progress 8 score for the school for that cohort.

I used a Linear Regression Model to explore relationship between KS2 Average Point Score (KS2APS) and Mean Progress 8 score (P8MEA) for all state secondary schools in England in 2019.

This suggests three potential clusters within the data:
1. the majority of mainstream schools
2. Special Schools, for students with specific learning difficulties (low KS2APS and P8MEA)
3. 131 fully (118) or partially (13) Selective Schools with KS2APS greater than 31.5