How does Year 4 writing attainment in Jan 2022 compare with 2021 & 2020?

In January 2020, we ran a Year 4 writing assessment. We planned to run one in January 2021, but it was delayed until June 2021 because of school closures. Just last month, in January 2022, we completed another Year 4 assessment.

When we compare the results of these three assessments, the striking thing to note is the rates of absenteeism. How do we measure absenteeism? We ask schools to upload a list of all their pupil names, and then to upload those pupils’ responses. If a name is uploaded but not a response, that pupil is marked as absent.

Overall absentee rate

• In January 2020, 6% of Y4s were absent.
• In June 2021, it had gone up to 10%.
• For this assessment, it was 12%.

12% is the highest absentee rate on any of our assessments, ever.

Absences by group

The absences are concentrated amongst certain groups of pupils and are highest in the male PP cohort.

• 16% of male PP pupils were absent for this assessment.
• 10% of female non-PP pupils were absent.

We will publish more detailed analysis of these patterns next week.

The absentee pupils are also disproportionately low-attaining. We can tell this because we can compare back to spring 2020, when we carried out an assessment with these exact same pupils when they were in Y2.

• 16,598 pupils took part in both assessments. These pupils averaged 478 on their Y2 assessment.
• 2,044 pupils took part in the spring 2020 assessment and were registered to take part in the Y4 one but were absent. These pupils averaged just 466 back in Y2.

These high rates of absenteeism make comparisons with previous assessments tricky. We have seen an increase in Y4 average scores in this assessment compared with the one in January 2020, but that may well be a result of the high absentee rates.

What does all this mean for grade boundaries?

As well as providing schools with a scaled score, we also provide grades. We use the government’s own primary writing grading system, Working Towards (WTS), Expected Standard (EXS), and Greater Depth (GDS). In the most recent national writing assessment, in summer 2019, the government awarded 20% of Y6 pupils GDS and 58% EXS, making a total of 78% EXS+.

In 2020 & 2021, we applied those statistics to our assessment too. This meant that the grade boundaries in each case were very different, because the attainment profile was different.

In 2022, we have continued with this approach. We’ve awarded 20% of our cohort GDS, and 58% EXS.

This means that the grade boundaries are different from the past two years. The GDS boundary is 570 and the EXS boundary is 500.

The impact of the pandemic on our grade boundaries

Before the pandemic, attainment was fairly stable from one year to the next. This meant that we could keep the grade boundaries the same and keep the proportions getting each grade the same too. Since the pandemic, we have seen big fluctuations in attainment, which mean it isn’t possible to keep grade boundaries and proportions the same. We have to choose between the following options.

OPTION A: Keep the percentage getting each grade the same — which means changing the grade boundaries.

OPTION B: Keep the grade boundaries the same — which means a different percentage of pupils reach each boundary.

There are good arguments for and against each option. We decided at the start of last year that if this circumstance arose we would choose option A, and change the grade boundaries. That is what we are doing. Back in September 2020 we wrote a three-part blog series explaining how we had set grades in the past, and why we would change the boundaries if attainment patterns changed dramatically. This blog series starts here, with the discussion of changing the boundaries in the third part, here.

Here you can see how this works for the schools who took part in our most recent Y4 assessments. You can see that in each case we have kept the proportion achieving each grade the same, and that this has resulted in different grade boundaries each time because of the different underlying performance.

I am a subscriber school and I still want to use the old boundaries!

Our results pdf will use the new boundaries. However, if you really don’t like this decision, then you can use the original grade boundaries when you enter data into your own school’s systems. To do so, you can just download your results spreadsheet and change the grade boundaries. This will not update the results pdf or any of the information in our systems, but it will allow you to easily update the data you enter into your system. If you’d like more guidance on this, please attend our webinar on Monday 14th February at 4pm.