South Tyneside College boss calls for urgent change to new system

South Tyneside College Principal Alison Maynard has joined several high-profile education leaders across the country in slamming Progress 8 over what they say is its fundamentally flawed assessment model when applied to colleges which support pupils aged 14 to 16.

Introduced two years ago, it aims to judge schools by charting learner progress in secondary education – from the end of primary school to the age of 16.

Unlike the previous headline measure of five good GSCE grades, Progress 8 looks at results in eight core national curriculum subjects across five years.

However, it also rates any college which supports the learning of children from the age of 14, many of whom may have failed in mainstream education or even been home schooled.

Critics of Progress 8 include the Careers College Trust (CCT), Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), and the Association of Colleges (AoC), which has raised its concerns with the Department for Education (DfE).

Now Ms Maynard is championing the North East call for change, insisting Progress 8 is unfairly weighted to give a false indication of how colleges are performing.

She said: “I agree that there are benefits to schools working to ensure each student makes progress and doesn’t coast along at the same educational level.

“But the huge failing of Progress 8 is that it doesn’t shape itself to colleges which support students for only part of their secondary education and teach largely vocational subjects rather than the core national curriculum.

“These learners may have complex needs or simply not have leant themselves to mainstream secondary education and may even have been home schooled.

“In these cases, a college may intervene and help them back into education at the age of 14, meaning they only support them for two of the five years.

“Once in college, they are also likely to follow a personalised, vocational programme alongside math and English, rather than the national curriculum.

“Progress 8 takes no account of the way the college has played an important role within the community by supporting these young people, helping them towards potentially vastly improved outcomes.”

Under the first Progress 8 results, which were published earlier this month (Note – January), South Tyneside College was listed as attaining poorly.

However, Ms Maynard insists this is a perfect example of the new system’s flaws.

Of the 22 students aged 14 to 16 who had their progress checked, all but one has now entered post-16 education.

Twelve are high attaining students who last summer successfully passed through Career College North East (CCNE), a specialist vocational programme centred on a partnership between the college and Ofsted-rated ‘outstanding’ St Wilfrid’s RC College, in South Shields.