Calculating progress 8 scores

Last reviewed on 29 November 2023
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School types: All · School phases: Secondary
Ref: 11635

Understand how progress 8 is calculated for maintained schools and academies. Get to grips with confidence intervals, and see how the calculations differ for pupils with missing or incomplete data.

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Contents

  1. What is progress 8?
  2. Which qualifications count towards calculating progress 8? 
  3. Pupils with incomplete or no KS2 results, and those working below the level of the test
  4. Confidence intervals account for ‘natural uncertainty’ of calculations 

This article refers to the DfE guidance on secondary accountability measures.

What is progress 8?

Progress 8 is one of the headline performance measures reported for secondary schools. It compares how much progress a pupil makes between the end of primary (Key Stage (KS) 2) and the end of KS4, compared with pupils who started at a similar level at KS2. It tracks this across 8 subjects.

A progress 8 score is the difference between a pupil's actual attainment score across the 8 subjects and the average attainment score of pupils with similar prior attainment.

How are pupils’ progress 8 scores calculated? 

Find a full list of the 2023 provisional

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