Is there no place for 'negative progress’ in post-16 progress measures?

By Eddie Playfair, Senior Policy Manager at AoC

The Department for Education (DfE) is consulting here about changes to 16-19 performance measures in England (closes on 21 July). Amongst a number of unobjectionable technical changes* it proposes moving the ‘negative progress cap’ from -1 to -2. This reminds us of one of the more unhelpful concepts used to judge college performance; that of ‘negative progress’.

The principle of measuring progress in GCSE English and maths, rather than raw results, is a sound one. This values every case where a student has been able to improve on their previous GCSE grade. So a student who left school with a grade 3 and then achieves a grade 4 contributes progress of +1. The same applies to a student who started with a grade 2 and moves up to a grade 3. If a student retakes and achieves the same grade as before, their progress is 0.

The problems arise in deciding how to quantify the achievements of those students who achieve lower grades in their post-16 retake than they did at school. The current system attributes these a ‘negative’ progress score of -1 regardless of how much lower their grade is. This feels very harsh as they have not ‘lost’ their current grade, they’ve simply not yet been able to improve on it. A student who leaves school with a grade 3 continues to be able to claim credit for that grade throughout their life. But this method of calculating a single overall measure of progress for a college means that every student with a score of -1 will cancel out the impact of every student with a score of +1. There are many reasons why students underperform in a GCSE retake, but none of these will take away their previous grade, so it makes no sense to see them as going backwards or making ‘negative progress’.

If negative progress of -1 seems unfair, the proposed new system is even worse as it attributes a score of -2 to students whose grade goes down by two or more. Effectively, one student going from grade 3 to grade 1 could cancel out the impact of two students who go up from grade 3 to grade 4.

There are two alternative approaches in competition here. One is: “you’re only as good as your latest attempt” and the other is: “once you’ve achieved something, you can bank it and move on”. Our notion of educational progression is generally based on the latter and we don’t normally expect people to continue repeatedly demonstrating what they’ve already been assessed and graded on. Our emphasis is rightly on valuing evidence of new learning and improved skill levels.

But if every provider is measured in the same way why does any of this matter? Measures have consequences and using this methodology risks misrepresenting the positive impact of many colleges’ efforts to raise achievement in GCSE English and maths. This is a large and disproportionately disadvantaged cohort with many students facing multiple barriers to success. Making progress can take time and may include false starts and knockbacks and the most affected students are not spread around the system evenly. Why further penalise those colleges which have proportionally more students who haven’t yet overcome the obstacles they face?

Imagine a college with 1,000 GCSE English retake candidates– not untypical by college standards. Let’s say that half of them achieve one grade higher than in Year 11 giving a +1 score for each of those 500 students. If the remaining 500 students have neither improved nor gone down, they will all score 0 each and the overall college progress score will be +0.5, which is higher than any large college is currently achieving.

However, if negative progress comes into play with some or all of the 500 ‘non-improvers’, the college’s overall progress measure could fall to 0 or even become negative. So despite having 500 students achieving positive progress with all the improved life chances which flow from that, the college could appear to be doing worse than one where no students achieve any positive progress at all. Because the final progress score can depend on how badly the ‘non-impovers’ do, that ‘zero progress’ headline can conceal more than it reveals.

This is not about covering up student underachievement but representing colleges’ achievements fairly. Understandably, the government wants a clear single measure of progress which says something useful about a college’s ability to help students succeed and helps to identify where good practice can be found. It’s clearly also important to know how many students have not improved and why this happens. But ‘negative progress’ should have no place in calculating an overall college progress measure.

* The DfE consultation also covers proposals to break progress data down by prior achievement (grade 3, grade 2 and below), to relax the penalty for non-entry (to 2 years) and to refine the ‘retained and assessed’ measure.