Rankings May Be Stigmatising Schools
1:24 AM
Headteachers have recently claimed that
schools situated in areas identified as white working-class in the UK are
presently being destroyed by the league table systems in the country. It is
believed that rankings are stigmatising these secondary schools that were subjected
to new criteria in terms of ranking their pupil achievement back in 2017.
New parameters were added to the league
table format to accommodate the judging of pupil achievement. This was during
the heavy alteration on its format in January of last year. Considerable
criticisms were hurled against the changes especially from head teachers. The
likes of Peter Gale Headteacher, an education professional himself with 20
years of experience in the field agree that that the present format is toxic.
This makes those white communities that are disenfranchised to get stigmatised
in the process. These schools traditionally have the poorest results in terms
of academics in the country. The new parameters will only cause these schools
to be more disillusioned in light of them being unfairly balanced.
Statistics reveal that only 24% of white
schoolboys in Britain achieve five A* to Cs at the end of school exams for
secondary level. This includes Maths and English. Some have stated that if this
is something that has been done on any ethnic group that is sitting at the
bottom, people are likely going to end up becoming unsettled. However, it tends
to become less controversial somehow because what is involved here are the
white working-class.
While there are those that have stated how
the changes that were being introduced to the league-table were welcome
initially, the emerging patterns show that there may be a need for a second
look at the provisions. It is also being expected that talks with the DfE will
have to be carried out if they are to resolve this.
Until last year, the performance of
secondary schools used to be judged mainly through the proportion of the
students that can achieve five GCSEs for grades A* to C, with Maths and English
included. However, the two measures that were recently adopted, which are
referred to as progress 8 and Attainment 8, which are supposed to help get the
rankings be fairer, seem to be doing the opposite.
The introduction of Progress 8 is aimed are
measuring how well schools are serving the pupils by assessing where the
students have started and where they have ended up. This is done by looking at
their attainments in 8 GCSE or other equivalent subjects from grades A* to G
for every pupil. The results will then be compared against other pupils’
results that entered secondary schools on the national level who belong to the
same attainment levels. The maximum points for every school are at 80 points
for every pupil. Across all state secondary schools in the country, the
national average this year is at 49.9.
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