Progress 8 benchmark

If I can just say a couple of things in support of what you're saying, because I feel like, you know, when you're the head teacher, you're at risk of sort of sounding like an apologist for low spec standards or whatever in this.

And I think it's just a terrible position to be forced into because, you know, with, for example, the UK Progress 8 measure, which I know hasn't been working this year, but you know, it's based around average performance around a central point.

And so it's designed to have half of the schools above and half below.

And it's just the way, so if you've got a sort of negative progress eight, you know, you can't have more than half the schools in the top half.

That relates to another change that Michael Gove and Nick Gibb introduced.

They basically changed the way that school league tables worked by introducing something called Progress 8.

Now, explaining exactly how this league table works is pretty complicated, so I'll simplify it massively.

What Gove said was the best schools are the ones where kids make the most progress across eight subjects instead of just judging a school on how well the kids do in English and maths.

Gove was saying that's the good school because they've made the most progress.

'Cause if you have a school which is really affluent and maybe the children, you know, they start here and then they end up here, right? The results might look similar, but that's not to do with the good teaching because those kids would have got there anyway, right? Whereas this school has done something exceptional bringing those kids up there.

And so it was what progress was important, right? It was what progress the school made that decided where you were placed on the Progress 8 chart.

So all of this led to two things.

But the drop-off is a bit for girls as well, it's just much more significant for boys.

But when you are a head of department within a school making the arguments that you need to make for your subject, one of the strongest ones is going to be able to be this will make our school look good in a very obvious way in the most important figures and the fact that you know music wasn't heavily weighted what wasn't within the EBAC and then also it wasn't heavily weighted within Progress 8 meant that however much the leadership care about music those those big heavy hairy all sorts of massive weighty external numbers are going to be very important to members of leadership particularly when they're facing offset inspections so I think there's there is you know there could be more institutional weight given to music through the way that we externally value attainment within a school and it may be that the new arrangements for GCSEs help in that and that actually we're talking about this right now at a point when that may begin to reverse a bit at GCSE And therefore, you know, two or three years down the line, we could see that at A-level.

So that, I suppose, talks about why things might have changed.

But constantly you have the challenge that the A-level is a wonderful but very difficult subject to take it.

yeah yeah and then also just to mention for for those who are not familiar with a level music the jump between gcc and a level is huge um and certain examples it's it's even wider so for students to um go into say gcse music perhaps getting a six let's say between five and the seven, they might well find that initial start to A-level music a lot more challenging because what's required of the students in terms of their knowledge becomes greater.

And I've had that before in A-level classes where a student has, the students have dropped out because they've just seen the jump between GCSE and A-level to be too great for them in terms of what they were expecting.

And we're not talking about you know um unconfident musicians talking about very confident musicians you know very competent performers you know very competent composers so i think you're you're right in terms of the now we are hopefully starting to see the changes of key stage four curriculum um the secretary of education is making huge noises about potential reform like completely you know changing a lot, changing the paradigm, if you will, of what we were used to say back when Gove started with the EBAC and Progress 8.

Also, speaking of EBAC, the data that we were, I mentioned at the beginning of the show, also counted in for EBAC and we've eliminated EBAC now.

So just talking about the GCSE, I'm just interested in your thoughts as we sort of come towards the end.

But I'm just going to quote here that the bleak trajectory of A-level music received a massive lifeline late last year when the UK government announced it would abolish the English Bachelorette, controversial for some, and reform the Progress 8 accountability measures.

This followed a 15-year campaign by organisations like the Independent Society of Musicians.

While it would take several years for this policy shift to filter up to sixth form level, removing the structural hierarchy of subjects will free schools to reinvest in Key Stage 3 and GCSE music, which is vital for rebuilding the A-level pipeline.

Not inadequate in terms of their ability, just the sheer number of them in the system.

And, you know, a lot's been said around the changes that might be made to Progress 8.

And obviously that's welcome.

But I think we can put almost too much emphasis on that.

And when we speak to our members at our school, they say, yeah, you know, it would be great to have a bit more flexibility in Progress 8.

Obviously the EBAC's gone, so we can't have the EBAC subjects anymore.

What it looks like if we have these different categories, if it's more open than that, you know, we're waiting for that response.