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Agenda item

Education Outcomes 2021

Minutes:

Cate Duffy, Corporate Director, Children’s Services, presented the report.

 

In the presentation and discussion the following main points were made:

·         There were no public examinations in 2020 or 2021 and school level performance data was not published in the way that it normally would be.

·         In 2021, children were assessed by their teachers using a variety of assessment methods. There was flexibility in how assessments could be conducted.

·         Whilst school level data was not published, local authority national data had been published. This data could not be compared with outcomes from previous years due to the methods of the assessment being different but it was possible to see if outcomes were different. Nationally and locally, attainment had increased under teacher assessment. Nationally gender gaps and pupil premium gaps widened but in Islington they did not. At GCSE level there was virtually no gender gap in and the pupil premium gap was about half, and in some cases less than half, than it was in 2019.

·         There were many views about the robustness of the methods of assessment used in teacher assessment. However, there were more children in 2020 and 2021 who achieved the grades they needed to enable them to take their next steps.

·         A member raised concern about the figures indicating that Islington appeared to have performed worse than both the London average and the national average at Key Stage 4 for those with Education Health Care Plans (EHCPs) and Special Educational Needs (SEN). The officer stated that data comparisons in any year were difficult because the cohort of children with EHCPs who were entered for GCSEs varied dramatically. These children had a wide variety of needs and it was also a small cohort of about 70 young people which made it statistically difficult to compare. These children had to be looked at on a child by child basis. Ofsted recognised these difficulties and when they went into schools they tended not to look at this data in relation to the performance of a school.

·         A member of the public raised concern about the outcomes for black Caribbean children on free school meals. The officer stated that this was a small group of about 80 children and so it was difficult to make statistical comparisons. Also, methods of assessment differed nationally, across London and between Islington schools. This was a cohort that was tracked and would continue to be tracked.

·         A member asked whether the results of black Caribbean boys had decreased as a result of other factors such as discrimination. The officer stated that although the results for this cohort were lower in 2021 than in 2020, they were still higher than when examinations took place in 2019. At the time, there were concerns about teacher assessment and unconscious bias nationally but it was difficult to draw conclusions about the effect on outcomes. To try and safeguard against bias schools were supported to blind mark so teachers did not know whose papers they were marking. There were a number of projects to target the black Caribbean cohort as historically there had been underperformance in this group.

·         A member asked if it was possible to break down the data into males and females. The officer advised that in normal years it would be possible to do this but for 2020 and 2021 pupil level data was not compiled.

·         A member raised concern about the cohort of pupils on free school meals, the pupil premium and the changing profile and asked what the council could do to mitigate against problems and make improvements. The officer advised that due to changes in Universal Credit, children were remaining entitled to free school meals for several years even if their families moved off the benefits that had entitled them to receive free school meals. This change increased the proportion who were entitled to pupil premium and changed the nature of that cohort which meant it was likely that outcomes for this group would improve.

·         Subject to there being no more lockdowns there would be public exams this year and a more usual set of data that would be presented to the committee next year. However, this cohort was still a cohort that had been affected by the pandemic and lockdown so although data would be affected by this, the data would be more robust than the data than 2020 and 2021 data.

 

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.

Supporting documents: