This report investigates the link between different 5 percentage point bandings of attendance and attainment for pupils at the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 4 (KS4) in state-funded mainstream schools in 2022/23. Absence from school is not the only factor that is likely to affect a pupil's level of attainment. There are a range of pupil,…

Candidates taking a reformed (decoupled) Advanced (A) level may follow an 'Advanced Subsidiary (AS) + A level' route in that subject, taking the decoupled AS level, usually in Year 12, followed by the A level, usually in Year 13. Alternatively, they may follow an 'A level only' route. The research described in this report explored whether there…

Being entered for exams and reaching key educational thresholds, for example 5 A* to C grades (including English and Mathematics) at GCSE, are important markers of participation and success in secondary education. However, little is known about the prevalence and make-up of children in care reaching these thresholds. Using secondary data analysis,…

Unreliability in marking is well documented, yet we lack studies that have investigated assessors' detailed use of assessment criteria. This project used a form of Kelly's repertory grid method to examine the characteristics that 24 experienced UK assessors notice in distinguishing between students' performance in four contrasting subject…

Historically, for a period of a hundred years or more from the 1860s to the 1960s, assessment developed as an educational technology for selecting and certificating small numbers of individual students. This process was largely focused on excluding the majority. Over the last 30-40 years, the focus and purpose of assessment has changed. The…

The United Kingdom's Department for Education has recently changed the nature of the AS-level examinations normally taken by students aspiring to enter higher education degree courses one year into their post-compulsory education. In the face of protests from universities and other institutions that this would both harm students' progression…

In the UK and other countries, the use of end-of-module assessment by coursework in higher education has increased over the last 40?years. This has been justified by various pedagogical arguments. In addition, students themselves prefer to be assessed either by coursework alone or by a mixture of coursework and examinations than by examinations…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate and understand whether students who complete a work placement as part of their degree course achieve a better classification of degree than those students who do not include a placement. Design/methodology/approach: The study was conducted by extracting the profiles of computing students from…

This article explores the context of the period following the Education Reform Act 1988 in terms of the efforts by successive governments to raise academic standards. These attempts are illustrated by discussion of the impact of the introduction of market forces and parental choice, a centralised National Curriculum and associated assessment…

Quality and standards in higher education is a tricky topic, but one that will not go away. Everyone has a view, but it is rarely informed by fact. The subject is particularly difficult for several reasons. Perhaps the most important of these is the lack of any generally agreed definition of what quality and standards are. In this article, the…

Ofsted has always courted controversy. With the appointment of a strident new chief inspector its operations are likely to remain, or become increasingly, controversial. This article provides a detailed critique of key documents which describe the new inspection regime that for good or ill will have major consequences in schools. Although in…

As Barker notes, the link between disadvantage and poor educational attainments is an enduring one. Educational policy over the last 40 years or so has tended to respond to educational inequality in predominately one of two ways--attempts to raise standards across the system as a whole and attempts to redistribute resources to families, schools…

The practice of tracking and ability grouping--the division of students into separate tracks, classes, and groups for instruction based on their purported interests and abilities--has long been debated. Evidence from decades of research indicates that tracking magnifies inequality between high and low achievers without raising achievement overall,…

A new judgemental method of equating raw scores on two tests, based on rank-ordering scripts from both tests, has been developed by Bramley. The rank-ordering method has potential application as a judgemental standard-maintaining mechanism, because given a mark on one test (e.g. the A grade boundary mark), the equivalent mark (i.e. at the same…

Purpose--In the UK there is currently a national consultation on the structure/adoption of an academic credit framework for higher education. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the principles underlying such a framework, when applied in the context of a workplace research project, can facilitate debate between the academic disciplines and…