Commenting on the latest guidance on secondary accountability measures including Progress 8 and Attainment 8, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
"Progress 8 is fundamentally flawed. It does not account for context and is not fit to meaningfully describe the work that takes place in a school – no single score or measure ever could.
"The fact it will not be calculated for the next two years is welcomed but it is not the sign of a government understanding that a school is about more than the results of tests taken by a small proportion of the school, over a few weeks in summer. It is being done because they have no other choice, and they intend to return to it once the pandemic-affected cohorts have passed through Year 11.
"Other flawed data, focused on attainment not progress, will still be published this year which will allow people to mistakenly rank schools and lead them to inaccurate conclusions about their ‘quality’ on the sole basis of exam results. So the problems will not disappear, even in the years without Progress 8.
"This should be an opportunity to rebalance what is a blunt, misleading and ineffective school accountability system in England. Rather than simply judging or labelling a school, with just one inaccurate word or number, the focus should be on how to help the education system share in its successes and to support each other’s continual development and improvement."