Our academies are working ceaselessly to further develop the curriculum offer for all our students and give them the very best opportunities to move to their next stage of education, training or employment.
We are proud to educate significantly more disadvantaged pupils in our academies than is the case in schools across England as a whole and yet our secondary pupils achieved results in 2019 (the most recent examinations sat nationally) which were at least in line with students nationally, demonstrating the commitment of colleagues and pupils across our academies to be the very best they can be.
KS4, The national context:
There has been a national increase in awarded grades compared with 2020 which was itself an increase on 2019 results. What this looks like nationally is a 1.3% increase in the proportion of all grades that were 5 or above, rising from 61.5% in 2020 to 62.8% this year. However, level 4-plus grades have remained relatively stable at 79.1% up from 78.8% in 2020. As widely expected this year, top grades have risen slightly with the proportion of 7 or above grades rising from 27.5% last year, to 30% this year- a rise of 2.5 percentage points.
A similar pattern is evident in our trust results.
As for individual subjects, the proportion of 7 or above grades in maths rose by 1.6% percentage points from 24.3% last year to 25.9% this year, whereas the percentage of grades at level 4 for maths remained stable – up slightly from 77.1% in 2020 to 77.9% in 2021. The outlook for English is a bit different with the proportion of 7 grades up by much more: 2.8 percentage points to 26.3% this year. Grade 4’s remains stable at 80.9%, up slightly from 80.2% last year. Movement in science was also very slight at grade 4, up from 64.4% in 2020 to 64.7% in 2021.
Our Trust data:
Although we do not have the percentage of level 4 grades and level 5 grades reported separately, we can see from the percentage of basics reported across our Trust that we have a similar slight rise overall on 2020 figures with 40% of pupils achieving a basics measure of level 5 or above compared to 38% in 2020. At grade 4 this has moved from 64% of students achieving grade 4 in basics in 2020 to 66% in 2021, which is 1% higher than the figure submitted in data entry 3 in June.
We are pleased to report that no additional scrutiny beyond sampling was carried out by awarding bodies indicating confidence in the assessment and moderation measures put in place across our trust.
The graph below indicated progress 8 for 2019 at each of our academies and gives an indication of progress in 2020 and 2021.