[Paper Review] The implications of Labour's plan to scrap Key Stage 2 tests for Progress 8 and secondary school accountability in England

George Leckie, Lucy Prior+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Nov 15, 2019

School Choice and Performance17 references4 citations

TL;DR

This paper evaluates Labour's proposed abolition of Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests in England, arguing that removing KS2 data would invalidate Progress 8, the current accountability measure for secondary schools. The authors demonstrate that an 'Adjusted Attainment 8' measure—using only GCSE results adjusted for pupil demographics—would be less fair and meaningful than Progress 8, particularly for schools serving disadvantaged students.

ABSTRACT

In England, Progress 8 is the Conservative government's headline secondary school performance and accountability measure. Progress 8 attempts to measure the average academic progress pupils make in each school between their KS2 tests and their GCSE Attainment 8 examinations. The Labour opposition recently announced they would scrap the KS2 tests were they to be elected. Such a move, however, would preclude the publication of Progress 8 and would leave schools to be compared in terms of their average Attainment 8 scores or, at best, their Attainment 8 scores only adjusted for school differences in pupil demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. In this paper, we argue and illustrate empirically that this best-case scenario of an 'Adjusted Attainment 8' measure would prove less fair and meaningful than Progress 8 and therefore a backwards step, especially when Progress 8 itself has been criticised as biased against schools teaching educationally disadvantaged intakes.

Motivation & Objective

• To assess the implications of scrapping Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests on the Progress 8 accountability framework in English secondary schools.
• To evaluate whether an 'Adjusted Attainment 8' measure—based on GCSE outcomes and pupil demographics—could serve as a fair and meaningful alternative to Progress 8.
• To investigate whether the proposed alternative would be less equitable, especially for schools serving educationally disadvantaged pupils.
• To provide empirical evidence on the fairness and statistical validity of Progress 8 versus alternative accountability measures.
• To argue that removing KS2 data would represent a regression in school accountability, despite criticisms of Progress 8's bias.

Proposed method

• The authors use empirical data from English secondary schools to model the impact of removing KS2 test scores on accountability metrics.
• They compare Progress 8—defined as the average progress from KS2 to GCSE—against an alternative measure: Attainment 8 adjusted for pupil demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
• Statistical modeling is applied to assess fairness and reliability, focusing on how well each measure predicts student outcomes across different school intakes.
• The analysis includes simulation of accountability outcomes under both the current Progress 8 system and the proposed alternative.
• The study uses regression techniques to adjust Attainment 8 scores for pupil background, evaluating the resulting measure's discriminatory impact.
• The authors evaluate the fairness of each measure by examining disparities in accountability outcomes across schools with varying levels of disadvantage.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What would be the impact on school accountability if Key Stage 2 tests were abolished?
• RQ2 How would an 'Adjusted Attainment 8' measure compare to Progress 8 in terms of fairness and statistical validity?
• RQ3 Would the absence of KS2 data lead to a less equitable system for schools serving disadvantaged students?
• RQ4 To what extent does Progress 8’s current bias against schools with high proportions of disadvantaged pupils affect its legitimacy?
• RQ5 Can a GCSE-only accountability system, even when adjusted for demographics, provide a fair and meaningful measure of school performance?

Key findings

• Removing Key Stage 2 tests would make Progress 8 impossible to calculate, as it relies on prior attainment data from KS2.
• An 'Adjusted Attainment 8' measure, while potentially more equitable in theory, would be less fair and meaningful in practice than Progress 8.
• The authors find that Progress 8, despite its known biases, remains a more robust and informative measure than any alternative based solely on GCSE outcomes.
• Schools serving disadvantaged pupils would be disproportionately disadvantaged under the proposed alternative, as the absence of KS2 data removes a critical baseline for measuring progress.
• The study shows that even when Attainment 8 is adjusted for pupil demographics, the resulting measure lacks the statistical power and fairness of Progress 8.
• The paper concludes that scrapping KS2 tests would represent a step backwards in school accountability, undermining both accuracy and equity in performance measurement.