Next year’s provider-level qualification achievement rates (QARs) will be published following a two-year suspension.

The Department for Education has today confirmed school and post-16 accountability arrangements for 2021/22.

It said results from key stage 4 and post-16 qualifications in 2021/22 will be published in school and college performance tables using the government’s “normal suite of accountability measures, as far as that is possible”.

For QARs, which have not been published at provider level since 2018/19, the update said: “Institution-level qualification achievement rates for post-16 providers will be published for education and training, traineeships and apprenticeships.

“These will be published through Explore education statistics.”

QAR data, which is used to measure providers’ performance and hold them to account, was scrapped for the 2019/20 academic year following the Covid-19 outbreak. Providers were not able to receive the data themselves and it was not shared with Ofsted.

While provider-level QARs were again not published in 2020/21, some of the data was produced and shared with providers, the DfE, and the inspectorate.

The DfE said it was reintroducing league tables for school, college and FE provider qualifications because “after two years without publication of performance data, it is important that this information is publicly available to parents and students to support them when choosing schools and post-16 institutions, given the importance of qualification outcomes to student progression”.

However, it said it recognised the “uneven impact on schools and colleges of the pandemic” and will “ensure clear messages are placed on the performance tables to advise caution when drawing conclusions from the 2021/22 data”.

Qualification results achieved in 2021/22 “will also count towards school and college performance measures in future years”.

The DfE said it would need to “adjust the way that we calculate some performance measures at both key stage 4 and 16 to 18 stages for 2021/22 to take account of the fact that results of qualifications achieved in 2019/20 and 2020/21 will not be included”.

The changes to methodology “will be designed to minimise the impact of gaps in data for schools and colleges”. For example, at 16 to 18 level, the government “will not be able to use KS4 baseline data from 2019-20 or 2020-21, which will affect the 16 to 18 value added measure and the English and maths progress measure in 2021-22 and future years”.

“We will need to confirm whether these measures can be produced. Details of these adjustments will be available in technical guidance in due course.”

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