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When primary pupils were unable to sit key stage 2 Sats in 2019-20 and 2020-21 because of the Covid pandemic, school leaders knew that, years later, this could cause a problem around Progress 8 measures.

Progress 8 tracks progress by comparing the nationwide GCSE results of students who had similar starting points at the end of KS2. In other words, Progress 8 (P8) data shows not just students’ GCSE grades - but also how far they travelled to get there.

But in April 2024 the Department for Education confirmed that it would not introduce a replacement measure for P8 in 2024-25 and 2025-26 - the years when those pandemic KS2 cohorts would have received P8 scores, if they had been available. This meant that, for those two years, schools would be largely judged on raw KS4 attainment data.

Judging schools without Progress 8

Last January school leaders voiced fears to ����Vlog that, under this arrangement, certain schools might be viewed unfairly, particularly where KS4 cohorts started with lower KS2 attainment.

This came months after analysts at FFT Education Datalab predicted that it would “become apparent” that P8 is .

The impact of having no P8 has now started to emerge; pupils in Years 5-6 during Covid were in Years 10-11 in 2024-25, so the older cohort got their GCSE results in August 2025.

So were the concerns justified?

Judging by an exclusive survey for ����Vlog this month, these fears appear to have been at least partially realised.

Teacher Tapp asked 980 teachers across England about the impact of the absence of P8: 44 per cent indicated that their school’s results were judged either slightly or much less fairly.

However, concerns varied depending on the level of deprivation that a school is in - a measure factored into simultaneous polling of 892 teachers. In the areas with the highest deprivation, 57 per cent of teachers indicated that their school was judged less fairly without P8, compared with 36 per cent in the least deprived areas.

This chimes with analysis from FFT of , which compares P8 with a more standalone measure of GCSE-level results known as Attainment 8.

An FFT spokesperson sets this out for ����Vlog in stark terms: “If we look at the 20 per cent most disadvantaged secondary schools in 2024 and 2025, 12 per cent of them were in the top 20 per cent of schools in 2024 (based on Progress 8) and 6 per cent of them were in the top 20 per cent of schools in 2025 (based on Attainment 8).”

Under the P8 measure, FFT indicates, some schools in areas of severe poverty ranked among the best in the country; under Attainment 8, their results seemed less impressive.

However, it is clear that many schools remain positive about how their performance looks without the prism of P8.

While previous Teacher Tapp findings in January 2025 indicated that 61 per cent of leaders thought the absence of KS2 data made it more difficult to track progress, some schools told ����Vlog this month that they were satisfied with alternative approaches they have devised.

Lack of national comparisons

Jill Silverthorne, headteacher at Bishop Stopford School in Kettering, Northamptonshire, says it has used FFT data to track progress. This applies cognitive abilities tests - often referred to as CATs - instead of KS2 Sat results, then “generates predicted grades”.

The problem is that, while this has worked as a stopgap for P8 and helped the school to generate targets that “are still highly ambitious for our students”, the school is still partly operating in the dark because “there’s nothing to compare us nationally”.

Paul Walton, acting head at All Saints Catholic College in London, says the lack of data has not hit the school “as strongly as initially anticipated”. It has used an analytics platform that holds data on 1,200 other schools and 200,000 students, generating “indicative P8 scores” also based on CATs.

Mr Walton adds: “Our attainment outcomes remained well above the national average, which provides important reassurance for key stakeholders, but I would think this is a challenge for schools in selective areas.”

‘It goes without saying that high free-school-meals schools will look worse under Attainment 8’

Experts say that, whatever the success of individual schools’ alternatives to P8, the bigger picture must not be missed: P8 is designed to more fairly assess attainment on a national scale.

John Jerrim, professor of education and social statistics at UCL Institute of Education, says the alternatives should provide results “pretty similar” to P8s and are “probably as best as can be done” in the circumstances.

But he adds: “It does go without saying that high free-school-meals schools will look worse under Attainment 8 than P8.

“The hope is that people using these data for high-stakes purposes - such as Ofsted - are smart enough to recognise this.”

When ����Vlog asked Ofsted about how schools would be judged in the absence of P8, it offered emollient words but without any explicit mention of P8.

A spokesperson says: “Inspectors want to understand a school’s context, including who its pupils are and what needs they might have. They use published data to support their conversation with leaders during the pre-inspection call, and to determine which inspection activities will be most useful to answer questions about the school’s unique circumstances.

“We recognise that published outcomes data may have gaps or limitations. Inspectors will primarily want to understand the quality of education as pupils experience it, and how well leaders know what it’s like to be a pupil at their school. In evaluating pupil achievement, inspectors will use both quantitative data and evidence gathered on inspection to build an overall picture and guide their grading decision.”

Context is crucial: many schools want their progress gauged by more than attainment data, and while no one claims P8 is perfect, leaders say it gives a more rounded picture.

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Marcus Shepherd, education director at E-ACT multi-academy trust, which runs 20 primaries, 14 secondaries, two all-through schools and a special school, says: “Without Progress 8, school performance is being judged largely on absolute attainment - how high up the mountain a student has climbed, without enough recognition of where they started.

“Some pupils begin halfway up, others much lower down, and that context matters if we’re trying to understand the impact a school is having.”

‘Missed opportunity’ for new measure

However, some leaders also point to the limitations of P8, and in response to last year’s curriculum and assessment review, the government announced plans to overhaul the measure.

Yet the planned changes to P8 seem more likely to affect students’ curriculum choices rather than how disadvantage is measured.

Tom Middlehurst, deputy policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders, says “an opportunity has been missed” to better reflect schools’ contexts.

He describes P8 as “a measure that prioritises some subjects above others, and does not adjust for factors such as disadvantage”.

Charlotte O’Regan, senior schools engagement manager at the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, says there is a “strong case” to design an additional progress measure that “better takes into account contextual factors”.

Jerrim says: “The argument about P8 - and [introducing] a contextual measure instead - has been going around for about 20 years. If the DfE want to do it, we know how to do it. And there is arguably better data to do it now than previously. It’s really a policy decision not to.”

A DfE spokesperson says it will announce the launch of a consultation on KS4 academic performance measures “shortly”, with the aim of “an improved P8 model that maintains a strong academic core while offering greater breadth and choice” and “recognises the value of a wide range of subjects, including the arts”.

The DfE will publish its response to the consultation before this year’s school summer holidays, “so that schools can take the revised P8 measure into account when determining subject choices for pupils who will start their GCSEs in September 2027”.

Pressure from new Ofsted system

And have the difficulties of certain schools in the absence of P8 been compounded by changes to the Ofsted inspection system?

Last September Ofsted announced its finalised new inspection framework, including a new “secure fit” approach. This requires schools to meet all criteria for a particular grade to be met, rather than the previous approach in which they only needed to meet most of the criteria to achieve that grade.

And without P8, crucially, schools are less able to demonstrate their impact in relation to prior attainment.

The absence of P8, then, may have skewed how many schools are viewed; success may even start to look like failure.

David Clayton, chief executive at Endeavour Learning Trust, which runs six primaries and four secondaries, describes P8 as “an imperfect but still useful indicator” and an “important part of the puzzle” in analysing school performance.

He warns of the “additional pressure” on schools as a result of Ofsted’s new approach, which may be exacerbated by the P8 hiatus.

“I hope that when Ofsted make judgements about pupil achievements, they make reference to school context and students’ starting points to truly understand a school and its educational offering,” he says.

Jerrim says that Ofsted’s “inspection data summary report” - used to scrutinise a school before a visit - usually comprises three years of data, meaning inspectors should have some historical context, regardless of the P8 hiatus.

But the overall situation is clearly far from ideal, and perhaps we will only truly understand the real impact of these two exceptional years after P8 has been back in operation for a while.

For now, though, we can be sure of this: the absence of P8, whatever its imperfections, shows that the perception of a school’s success each year may hinge on whatever system of measurement happens to be in place at the time.

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