Why are schools ‘off-rolling’ pupils?

Schools dramatically change a child’s life chances, as I’ve seen in my 24 years of teaching. How we measure their performance couldn’t be more important, but in recent years it’s gone wrong.

The key metric that secondary schools in England are judged on is called ‘Progress 8’. It looks at the progress that students make across eight subjects from the end of primary school to GCSE, and then ranks schools against each other. It’s zero-sum: for every winner, there is a loser. Some school leaders treat ‘good’ scores with humility and caution. Others plaster their badge everywhere.

However, it’s too easy to game the system and too many schools are taking advantage in ugly ways. The published figures do not tell us which students are counted in a school’s data and which aren’t.

The most egregious example is ‘off-rolling’ pupils, which is technically illegal but there are some wheezes. Years ago, some school leaders worked out that if you remove underperforming students from your roll before January, then they are not counted on the school’s results.