KS5 Prior Attainment calculation check for England from September 2019
Note:
This article should only be read if you have not submitted any monitoring data to Connect for your Key Stage 5 students for this Academic Year.
It is particularly important if you used our software to generate MEGs for your Year 13 students in September 2018 and have not used Connect for them since that point.
Summary of the change
We made an important change to how we calculate the prior attainment for all students following Level 3 courses from September 2019 onwards. This will affect your current Year 12 AND Year 13 students.
These changes were:
- The 9-1 GCSE grades will be assigned the score 9-1 respectively
- Applying the DfE transitional points (8.5-1) to the unreformed GCSE A*-G outcomes – see table 1 below for conversion.
Implications
To analyse your end of year Calculated Results for your current Year 13 students, and to set MEGs for Year 12 into 13, or incoming Year 12 students you will have to calculate prior attainment using these changed rules.
IF YOU HAVE CURRENT YEAR 13 STUDENTS WHERE MEGs WERE CALCULATED PRIOR TO SEPTMEBER 2019, THEN YOU WILL NEED TO RE-CALCULATE THEIR GCSE PRIOR ATTAINMENT SCORES.
Tables 2 and 3 below shows the impact of this re-calculation on MEGs. The changes will affect the prior attainment band range but our research showed that they had minimal impact on MEG outcomes for individual students.
Our data team have now also converted all the 2016 DfE national GCSE grades taken by A Level students in 2018 to the transitional points scale to be able to assess the impact on MEGs. Applying these point scales meant that our prior attainment bands needed recalibrating.
This can be seen in the tables below, comparing MEGs for the 2019 A Level Reports with MEGs for monitoring in 2019-20.
If you require further information, please contact our Educational Team on 01484 887600 or via [email protected].
Sue MacGregor
Alps Director of Education
