Matravers School say they are delighted with the results from the school performance tables which were published last month.
The league tables have revealed that Matravers School’s GCSE students achieved ‘average’ progress compared to other pupils across England, and whilst their A-level students were ranked ‘below average’, Matravers say their Post-16 education as a whole is around or above average.
In a year that saw tougher GCSEs in English and maths, Matravers students achieved an average Progress 8 score above the government’s expected standard.
The Progress 8 score aims to capture the progress a pupil makes from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school compared to pupils across England.
Headteacher Dr Simon Riding told White Horse News, “We are proud that we provide a challenging, high-quality curriculum offer. We treat students as individuals and ensure that they are able to select high-quality GCSE qualifications that enable them to move on to the next steps in their lives with meaningful qualifications, regardless of how this looks in the performance tables.
“These results are based on the hard-work and commitment of the whole school community in securing excellent individual outcomes for our students. Our students, staff, parents and governors are rightly proud of all they achieved. Our whole community has worked extremely hard to ensure that our students not only have high-quality GCSE qualifications, but also the aptitudes to use them.
“On entry to the school, this cohort was significantly below national average from primary school. They worked extremely hard to catch-up with, and in many cases exceed, their peers nationally and overall performance was national average by the end of Year 11.”
The GCSE results for maths and English, which were graded using a 9 to 1 number format for the first time, as opposed to the A to C letters format, were below the national average with 30% achieving a good pass at grade 5 or above in those subjects, compared to the national average of 39.6% and a Wiltshire average of 43.5%.
About the results, Dr Riding said, “The Department for Education identifies Grade 4 as “standard pass” and Grade 5 as “good pass” in English and maths. These are both raw attainment measures. A student requires only a Grade 4 to be able to progress on to post-16 study. Grade 4 is similar to Grade C previously. A school with a higher ability cohort on entry from primary school is more likely to perform better in these measures.
“Matravers’ cohort on entry was significantly below national average (and Wiltshire average) from primary schools and scored 30% Grade 5+ in English and maths and 58% Grade 4+ in English and maths. Our performance at Grade 4+ was very close to national average at 59.1%. This demonstrates that our cohort had caught up with their peers, despite starting their time at Matravers School significantly below.”
Alongside the Progress 8 score, secondary schools are also judged on their Attainment 8 score. Attainment 8 measures the attainment of pupils in eight GCSEs including English and maths. Matravers School’s Attainment 8 figure was 42.9 compared to the national figure of 44.6 and Wiltshire’s figure of 46.6.
“Schools that have lower ability cohorts on entry will usually have a lower Attainment 8 score. Matravers School 2017 cohort was significantly below national average on entry to the school from their primary SATs scores,” said Dr Riding.
The progress of A-level students at the school was ranked as below average compared to similar students across England.
At Matravers, 6.5% of students gained AAB or higher grades in at least two ‘facilitating subjects’ compared to an average of 17% of students in England and over 16% of students in Wiltshire. These subjects include maths, English, sciences and languages, which help students compete for top university places.
However, Matravers School said that it is wrong to only highlight A-level performance and that Post-16 education contains four key headline measures that are academic, applied general, tech levels, as well as A-level.
“At Post-16, indicators are once again around or above national average, reflecting the high performance of the Matravers Sixth Form in both academic and vocational performance,” said Dr Riding. “We are delighted to secure the highest achieving applied general results in the county.”
“Our sixth form programme has again enabled our students to progress to university (including many to Russell Group universities), apprenticeships or employment. We are proud of what our students have achieved.”
