Closing the Disadvantage Gap
We already knew that our disadvantaged students make better progress, by a considerable margin, than ALL students nationally whether disadvantaged or not. What we did not know was how this would place us in any potential league table for ranking schools in order of their success with this cohort.
We are delighted with a recent analysis of GCSE outcomes from summer 2019 which places Graveney in the top 10 secondary schools (or top 0.4%) in the country for Closing the Disadvantage Gap.
The analysis (link below) starts by reporting that publicly available data identifies 144 schools with a progress 8 score of 0.5 or more for disadvantaged students. To be one of these 144 schools puts you in the top 5% of secondary schools across the country for closing the gap. The writer then strips out schools with an English as a Second Language (EAL) cohort in excess of 30% because EAL students can be expected to make significantly more progress than their non EAL peers without any particular school based interventions. The analysis then removed schools with less than 30 disadvantaged students in their 2019 Year 11 cohort so as to avoid reaching conclusions where the numbers cannot assure statistical significance. The 144 schools are thus reduced to 31, and we are proud to see that Graveney is 9th on that list.
The analysis goes on to look at the many different school based factors that could be influencing this success, suggesting that a significant feature is a whole school culture of achievement which is shared by everyone and we would certainly say that this is a feature at Graveney.
Although this analysis has been done unofficially and will not be the basis of any formal accountability, in these times of uncertainty it represents a fantastic piece of evidence of what we stand for: whatever your background or ability, at Graveney you will succeed!