09 September 2015 weekly update

Dear Colleagues

Provisional Early Years and School Results 2015

Welcome back to the new school year. I hope you had a relaxing summer break.

Early Years Foundation Stage Results

The Early Years Foundation Stage results for Kent have improved again so that 73% of children achieved a good level of development compared to 69% in 2014. The national average is 62%. This continues a very good upward trend in recent years which places Kent well above the national average and among the best performing local authority areas.

 Key Stage 1

Kent has also performed above the national average for every indicator at Key Stage 1. Standards in Reading at level 2b+ improved to 84%, and attainment at level 3+ improved to 35%. Standards in Writing at level 2b+ improved to 74%, and at level 3+ to 18%. Standards in Maths improved at level 2b+ to 84%, and at level 3+ to 28%. These improvements reflect a good four year upward trend and provide a strong basis for improved pupil progress and outcomes in Key Stage 2, which is very positive.  

 Key Stage 2

The provisional Key Stage 2 results for Kent are in line with the national average and have increased to 80.2% for attainment at Level 4 and above in reading, writing and maths combined. This compares to 78.8% in 2014.

All the results at Key Stage 2 are in line with or above the national averages, with the exception of attainment in maths at levels 4 and 5 which is one percentage point below the national figures.

Attainment outcomes in writing and grammar, punctuation and spelling, have all improved. Level 5 attainment overall (25%) has remained the same as in 2014, and is above the national average, although there has been a slight dip in performance in level 5 outcomes in reading and maths.   

In reading, 89% of pupils attained level 4 or above, with 87% of pupils in writing and 86% of pupils in maths attaining the same standard. The trend over recent years is as follows:

The percentage of pupils achieving two levels of progress improved in writing to 95%, in maths to 91% and remained the same as 2014 for reading at 91%.

Overall, 207 Primary schools improved their results compared to their 2014 performance. In 2014, 247 schools improved their Key Stage 2 outcomes. At the same time more schools (244) performed above the national average this year compared to 233 schools in 2014. The number of schools that performed below the floor standard of 65% is 22, which is similar to 2014.  

These results will change as the national results are validated. In 2014 this process led to an increase in the provisional results for Kent by one percentage point.

GCSE and Post 16

At Key Stage 4 there is once again a mixed picture for the provisional GCSE results, with very wide variation in the performance of individual schools. Performance for 5 or more GCSE A*-C grades including English and Maths is 57.4%, which is in line with the first entry result in 2014.

EBacc results have improved to 28%, while English and maths A*-C grade results declined by a small amount. 29 schools performed below the floor standard of 40% of pupils attaining 5 A*-C grades with English and maths, compared to 24 schools in 2014. The situation is still very fluid as schools make appeals.  

At Post 16 there is also an incomplete picture and results are provisional. There appears to be a slight improvement on some measures. The percentage of students achieving three or more A level passes has improved slightly from 73.3% in 2014 to 73.8% this year and the percentage achieving A and B grades has also improved slightly from 13.9% in 2014 to 14.4% this year.

However there has been a decline in the percentage of students achieving two or more passes at grades A - E, to 86.4% compared to 88% in 2014 and 90.5% in 2013. There has also been a decline in the Average Point Score per entry to 194.8, compared to 212 in 2014 and 216 in 2013.  This three year downward trend in basic A' level performance is a concern.

At the same time there is a decline this year in the percentage of students gaining two and three vocational qualifications, although average point scores for vocational qualifications improved.

As usual we must qualify these results as provisional and a more detailed report on the results will be available when the data is more complete. Congratulations to all the schools that achieved improvements in performance in the 2015 results. 

Funding for School Collaborations

As you may recall a further sum of £1.2m has been allocated by the Funding Forum to fund collaboratives and school to school support. This funding will be allocated by the Area Boards of the Kent Association of Headteachers, in partnership with the Senior Improvement Advisers.

Bids are invited for this funding and we continue to focus on the following priorities for school to school support:

• Increasing the number of good and outstanding schools
• Raising pupil attainment and closing achievement gaps
• Improving leadership capacity and teaching and learning

There may also be an additional priority identified by a specific Area Board.  A list of any additional priorities will be found on the Area pages of the KAH section of KELSI.

We are particularly keen, this year, to allocate funding to mature collaborations that now have the capacity to support the improvement of a number of other schools.

Any proposal for funding should be sustainable, and we hope established collaboratives will also commit some of their own financial resources towards the sum that the bid requires. 

As you know we also ask for an evaluation report on the impact of the previous year's funding. The bids this year will be considered when a report has been submitted on the outcomes and impact of any previous funding from KAH.  

Applications should be made on the form available on the KAH section of KELSI, and sent to Sharon Batchelor (sharon.batchelor@kent.gov.uk) by 2 October, 2015.

Any bids from collaboratives submitted by 18 September, 2015, will be considered at KAH meetings later this month, if an evaluation report has also been provided, and funding will be allocated immediately after that. The bids that come in by 2 October will receive funding allocations later in the term.

Patrick Leeson
Corporate Director Education and Young People's Services