Pupil progress and value added
The terms ‘value-added’ (‘VA’) and ‘progress’ refer to the same thing: the amount of progress made by pupils between key stages compared to the average of similar pupils in their year group.
Value added and contextual value added
Value added/progress is a model which calculates the amount of progress made by pupils between key stages compared to the average of their statistical peers. Where a measure appears in the performance tables, Aspire uses prior attainment in establishing similar pupils as per the DfE’s methodology. In those measures which only appear in Aspire, FFT defines similar pupils by prior attainment in the previous key stage, gender and month of birth.
CVA (contextual value-added) uses further pupil and school information to identify similar pupils. This includes gender, month of birth, variation between their previous key stage’s results, SEN status, FSM status, EAL, ethnicity, time in their current school. The average teacher assessed level at the previous key stage, spread of the test scores at the previous key stage and the percentile rank of the cohorts FSM entitlement and the school’s geodemographic score are used for the school’s context.