Does Your Child's School Add Value?

That's a question which in an educational context can mean a number of different things, but a simple summary would be "does the school make a positive difference to my child's educational experience?"

It is a question which all parents ask themselves, and indeed sometimes the school, throughout their child’s education. In an age of parental choice, at least nominally, it’s only natural to choose a school that we believe will bring out the best in our children and, occasionally, we will question and review our choices. When it comes to adding value though, it can be difficult to assess and identify the effect of a school on our children’s development. We can’t conduct a scientific experiment , there are no controls, no counterfactuals of a different experience at a different school.

Within schools, we consider the concept of added value all the time. In some ways, perhaps surprisingly, it is a measurement with a specific meaning which can be quantified. All schools can measure, or have it measured for them, looking at the data they provide for external examinations. As I write, the DFE has just published academic data for all secondary schools, maintained and independent, which covers not only their raw examination results but also the ‘value added’ or progress made.

It’s a relatively simple calculation to do. Pupils arrive at secondary school having been tested academically one way or another; in the maintained sector that will have been Key Stage 2 SATS, whereas in the independent sector it will have been entrance assessments or baseline testing. That data is then sored up until the cohort sits its GCSEs or A Levels. The actual results gained in those exams are then compared to the results achieved by children at other schools with similar baseline data. Depending on the outcome, the school is then given a “value added” or progress score.

As we know, the government and the media love a good league table, even if Heads don’t. The league table for progress scores though makes interesting reading (it is available on the dfe.gov.uk website if you care to look). Unlike the standard exam result leagues tables, with the usual highly selective London-based household names at the top, the value added top ten of 737 independent schools are likely to be ones you haven’t heard of (though I hope you would have heard of the school in 63rd position!)

For me, to be in the top 9% of independent schools for progress matters much more than being at the top of the Telegraph league table. Why? Because that score tells us, and parents, much more about the work that teachers are doing with pupils at my school and about how each pupil can thrive there. It is not about creaming off the brightest and best, nor about brutal academic selection at an early age. It’s about getting the best out of every pupil who crosses our threshold. It’s about knowing them as individuals and responding to their particular strengths and weakness. Finally, it’s about caring about each child in and of themselves, not as a statistic and not just those who are near the A/B borderline. That’s where real value is added to every child’s experience , through the relationships between them and their teachers and between us and their parents. It’s hard to measure that, but its value is priceless.