Monitoring the school's progress
There were some interesting metrics in the school's SEPS (Self Evaluation Position Statement) from 2016, shown on the right.
This shows that in reading, writing and maths at Key Stage 1, the top-to-bottom spread was greater than the national average. The more advanced students were relatively more advanced than you find in other schools, while the less advanced were relatively less advanced.
That might reflect something about the school's teaching methods etc, but perhaps it's largely be due to having an interesting experimental school in a relatively deprived area - the social mix is relatively extreme.
But imagine if you were able to see these metrics, not just for reading, writing and maths, but also for making, discovering, performing, the metrics you record for students' individual learning and more pastoral things too.
And having done that, you were able to show that at the school relatively high numbers of students are relatively advanced in some way or other. That is really what I want to know as a parent of a child at the school. Presumably it's also what the school wants to know and demonstrate about itself.
To give you an example, my daughter seems relatively mature in her language, in her drawing and in her making than some of her friends. Right now, she's busy learning a lot about social situations. It's true that things are slower in some other areas. Overall though my impression is that the school's approach does help make relatively happy and confident children.
I realise that measuring performance against other schools like this might be difficult, but it would still work as a relative measure (e.g. year-on-year changes, intra- and inter-stage etc) of progress, and as a context for decisions and to show others the way.
Bit like Butan's "Gross National Happiness Index".
