The New Alps Independent School Benchmark

At Alps, we believe that being able to action against powerful insight drives continuous improvement. As one of a small number of organisations with access to the full Department for Education (DfE) national dataset, we have used this privilege to create the most comprehensive view of student outcomes available in England.  

Building on this foundation, Alps has now developed a unique dataset specifically for Independent and International schools and colleges – enabling meaningful comparison both to the full national picture and within the Independent and International sectors themselves. 

This dual-lens approach provides Independent and International leaders with unparalleled clarity on performance and progress, the Alps analysis in Connect now gives you: 

• Ability to benchmark against full national data: Benchmark outcomes against the entire DfE national dataset to understand how your students perform in comparison with national norms. 
• Sector-specific precision: Benchmark outcomes against a dedicated Independent dataset, to understand how your students perform in your sector. 
• Informed improvement: Identify strengths and areas for development within your setting. 

Why we have created the Independent School Benchmark  

We have created our new benchmark, following many requests from our Independent and International school customers, to allow more nuanced sector-specific insights. We are delighted that within Connect, Independent and International schools can now choose to analyse their results against the full DfE benchmark and a new Independent School Benchmark.   

This empowers these schools and colleges to: 

• Set ambitious, evidence-led targets 
• Evaluate progress with confidence 
• Measure outcomes within both national and independent contexts 

Ultimately, this new dataset reinforces Alps’ ongoing mission — to equip leaders with the insight needed to make data-driven decisions that improve outcomes for every student, everywhere. 

Below we have highlighted the key similarities and differences between the Independent School Benchmark and the Alps DfE Benchmark.

What does the Independent School Benchmark show?

Our Independent School Benchmark (ISB) is generated using the data from all the qualifying Independent schools in the full DfE National Data from 2019 and includes 498 schools. Using our familiar Alps bands, we are able to make comparisons between the ISB and the Alps 2019 DfE benchmark outcomes. 

Note: we decided to use 2019 DfE dataset to generate the new benchmark, as opposed to the more recent 2024 DfE dataset, because the 2024 data still contained Covid-legacy elevated prior attainment, which impacted outcome analysis. We aim to update the 2019 set using the 2025 DfE data, once this is released to us in the Spring.
 

Student performance: Minimum Expected Points and Minimum Expected Grades – is there a difference in performance outcomes?

At Alps, we use full national datasets from the DfE to generate Minimum Expected Points (MEPs) and Minimum Expected Grades (MEGs), which reflect progress made by students in the top 25% of schools and colleges.

For the top two bands of the ISB, the MEPs and MEGs show little difference from those in the 2019 DfE benchmark, the MEPs being 123.68 and 124 respectively in the top band and 109.08 and 109.82 respectively in the second band – see Fig 1. Crucially, this means that for both sets of benchmarks the MEGs remain the same for those top two bands’ students.  

Where the difference becomes more apparent is from bands 3 to 11, where students in the ISB are performing consistently higher compared to those in the same bands in the 2019 DfE benchmark, resulting in higher MEPs and MEGs for the ISB, as shown in Table 1 and Fig 1 below. 

Table 1

Fig 1

What does this mean for Independent and International schools’ analysis?

If you apply the ISB to your A level analysis, the level of impact compared to the 2019 DfE analysis will depend heavily upon your student profile, both overall and at subject level. If your students are mainly in the top two bands, you are unlikely to see a large change in your analysis. However, if your students are spread more widely through the bands, you are likely to see a fall in your Alps QI Score and Grade, reflecting the higher challenge introduced by the ISB i.e. students in the lower bands will be expected to achieve better outcomes using the ISB than the 2019 DfE benchmark.  

The overall outcome that we have seen with our own Independent and International customers, is that compared to the 2019 DfE benchmark, the Alps scores and grades using the ISB are likely to decrease, for example, for the QI indicator, this happens for 60% of the schools, because the ISB is a more exacting dataset with higher expected points than the 2019 DfE data. 

Independent School Benchmark – qualification coverage

Please note the ISB in Connect is only available for A level analysis, all other qualifications will show dashes. Please use the 2019 DfE benchmark for your analysis of other qualifications. 

How to access your new Independent and International School benchmark

Full information on how to access your ISB via a new benchmark toggle is in our Knowledge Base article. Simply search “Independent School Benchmark” or if you would like more support, you can email the team at [email protected] or call us on 01484 887 600. 

Not yet using Alps? Contact us to find out more

Alps is committed to working in partnership with Independent and International schools to ensure that every student achieves their full potential. Through our Platinum Partnership with HMC and alignment to the Independent Schools (IS) framework, we are embedding sector-led improvement approaches that combine rigour, simplicity and trust.  

If you are interested in seeing our Independent School Benchmark, contact us today to arrange a demo on how using Alps can transform your outcomes.