Attainment figures are meaningless for colleges. We should ditch them

For GCSE resits, the upcoming results day should be about celebrating students’ progress. Instead, it will be hijacked by those talking about college- or system-level attainment percentages.

For years now, post-16 English and maths teachers have been demoralised listening to lobbyists erroneously applying the word ‘fail’ to level 1 achievement (GCSE grades 1-3 are level 1 passes).

Given that grade 4+ is level 2, talking about it at a system level is important. Knowing that 78 per cent of our young people now achieve level 2 English and maths by age 19 means we can rightly praise the FE sector for transforming lives.

However, talking about ‘attainment’ of individual colleges or students or exam sittings is dumb. That’s why it’s not a government accountability measure. The headline measure for resits is progress by 18 (should be 19) and it’s been paused since 2020 anyway.

Attainment percentages from individual exam sittings are not a meaningful measure because they don’t include all the learners in scope.

That is a good thing; it means colleges have the freedom to use them as formative exam practice for their students, as most will need at least two years’ study, including opportunities to trial-run sitting assessments at a scale nobody experiences in school.

More importantly, attainment is a dangerously manipulatable measure. It’s easy to get 100 per cent if you’re unscrupulous.

There’s one more year of the 5 per cent ‘tolerance’, allowing students who still need to resit to be left unsupported with no funding penalty. ESFA calculates the 5 per cent based on overall study-programme numbers, not those in scope for Condition of Funding (CoF). This means larger colleges can simply not enrol hundreds of their lowest prior attainers for English or maths.

For sixth forms with small numbers of resit students, CoF basically doesn’t apply. But they already know that. And Ofsted is blind to it, perversely rewarding exploitation of this loophole. (It affects over 20,000 of the most disadvantaged students every year.)

Attainment is a dangerously manipulatable measure

Learners with EHCPs can be exempted too, disappearing altogether. So there’s not even any published data for FE Week to see when an Ofsted ‘outstanding’ provider is doing this for 98 per cent of their EHCP students.

Instead of extra support, those learners get nothing at all. There is no public data on numbers of exemptions, but I estimate tens of thousands, likely overlapping with disadvantage.

It’s also common practice to enter students who already achieved grade 4, usually because they want a 5 for uni. Even students regressing from a 5 to a 4 still count positively on attainment. Again, no published data, but I think there are somewhere around 25,000 of these.

Then there are those lost souls withdrawn before census day. Each year, some 30,000 students – disproportionately from low-income backgrounds – are withdrawn from post-16 by day 42.

All of that ought to get the attainment figures flying high, but there’s room to go further. After all, this isn’t a real measure.

There are no checks that a percentage is based on those who were in scope, and Ofsted will credulously accept anything. So, don’t enter any student you aren’t absolutely certain will walk a 4. Boom! 100 per cent 4+ on results day.

We’ve had four years with no DfE drivers to affect how we define success in resits; only our own values.

Those obstinately talking about ‘failure’ are damaging the morale of frontline teachers and the wellbeing of our young people. More than that, they validate the few bad apple providers exploiting rules to block tens of thousands of disadvantaged students from their opportunity to catch up.

Yet in spite of all of that, something miraculous is happening in FE. Thankfully, the quiet majority of colleges give learners enough time with fantastic teachers and the word ‘failure’ isn’t in their vocabulary.

As a result of their efforts, disadvantaged students are closing the gap with non-disadvantaged in 16-19 English and maths.

That is the only meaningful attainment measure, and it is the cumulative result of most colleges’ yearly focus on progress. 

So, this results day, let’s follow their lead in making all their students count by celebrating progress – not attainment!