The GL Assessment Value-Added Service provides a quantifiable measure of the impact your school’s teaching has had on its students. The service provides evidence that gives a richer understanding of your school’s performance considering the starting point of each student.

The information is delivered via an easy to use dynamic dashboard that allows you to carry out detailed analysis into the performance of cohorts and individual students, and by factors including subject and gender. Not only that but you can also compare your results against the average of other schools using the service.

Value-added looks not only at student outcomes (e.g. GCSE results) but also takes into account the starting point of each student, as well as the expected level of achievement at the time they joined the school. Some students would make a small amount of progress, most would make a near average progression and a few would make excellent progress. Over a fixed period of time, we can determine the amount of improvement a school has added to the student through factors such as the quality of teaching. Value-added is essentially the effect a school has on a student.

The GL Assessment Value-Added Service uses several data inputs including overall CAT4 score (mean SAS), CAT4 scores in each of the four batteries (verbal, non-verbal, quantitative and spatial), gender and month of birth. These inputs are used together to create an indicator for each student, which can be compared to actual exam performance to create a value-added score for each student, subject and overall school performance. The increased accuracy means a more powerful analysis in which schools can really see where they are making the most impact, for which types of students and in which subjects.

A school can look at attainment and exam results, to see how well they are doing, but value-added takes account of expected and actual attainment data where each pupil started from and the progress they made relative to other, similar students. The value-added allows you to monitor trends over time by looking at year on year comparisons. This information across the whole school helps school leaders in driving improvement.

• Measures the impact of teaching and learning on students’ actual attainment
• Compare the performance of your school against other schools using the service
• Show parents what the effectiveness of teaching in the school
• Provide a fairer measure than attainment alone
• Compare gender performance, as well as subject performance
• Provide analysis that in easy-to-use dynamic tables and graphs
• Provide robust evidence of school success and student performance, which can be used as the foundation for discussions with inspectors
• Provide clear evidence and insight to support school development plans. The clear and robust data allows you to pinpoint academic performance strengths and weaknesses in the school
• Demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching in your school to internal and external stakeholders.

The Fischer Family Trust (FFT) – a not-for-profit organisation specialising in the analysis of school performance data and providing value-added analysis to over 15,000 schools in the UK and internationally. GL Assessment and FFT are working together to provide the Value-Added service.

If you have any questions about the Value-Added Service please email valueadded@gl-assessment.co.uk, or complete the form below