Contextual information

Gathering information about individual pupils' context helps to:

• develop a more complete picture of the overall school context;
• analyse attainment results and progress for specific groups of pupils;
• analyse the progress of pupils with a value added approach (using prior attainment);
• analyse the progress of pupils with a contextual value added approach (using prior attainment and other contextual indicators.

Find out more about contextual information:

• What is contextual information?
• Viewing and describing contextual information
• Measuring pupil mobility
• Attendance data
• Deprivation measures
• Trends by year group

What is contextual information?

Typical background information to collect about a pupil includes the following.

• Gender
• Special educational needs
• Eligibility for free school meals
• First language
• Date of joining
• Ethnicity
• Age
• In care
• Home address including postcode
• Attendance

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Viewing and describing contextual information

As you view contextual information, search for characteristics that are not average (away from the centre line on this chart) and then look at the trend to identify if the background context is stable, rising or falling within the school population.

The following phrases are used to describe a school's context based upon the percentile value:

So for instance if a school was in the 87th percentile for number of pupils on roll, then the school is described as well above average in terms of the school roll.

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Measuring pupil mobility

Pupil mobility is 'the total movement in and out of schools by pupils other than at the usual times of joining and leaving' (Ofsted 2002). It exists in schools but for some the high levels of mobility make demands on school systems, resources, staff and the stable community of pupils.

There are several ways of measuring pupil mobility including:

1) $$\mathrm{MOBILITY}=\frac{\left(\mathrm{Pupils\; joining\; school}+\mathrm{Pupils\; leaving\; school}\right)\times 100}{\mathrm{Total\; school\; roll\; in\; a\; given\; year}}$$

2) The stability indicator (as used in RAISEonline) identifies the percentage of pupils who joined the school before the 1st October in a given year.

To help remember: high stability = low mobility   low stability = high mobility

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Attendance data

Pupil attendance is registered twice a day. An authorised absence is absence with permission from the school and includes instances for which a satisfactory explanation has been provided (for example illness).

Unauthorised absence is absence without permission from the school and includes all unexplained or unjustified absences.

Attendance data can be used to:

• provide background for a school;
• judge a school on its improvements in attendance;
• analyse progress or attainment by attendance.

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Deprivation measures

FSM – entitlement to free school meals has been widely used as an indicator of deprivation and has often been used as a proxy for low income. 

IDACI – income deprivation affecting children index. It measures the proportion of children under the age of 16 in an area living in low income households. The indicator, used in RAISEonline, ranges from 0.00 (least deprived) to 1.00 (most deprived). The measurement uses seven domains that include income benefits, health statistics and recorded crime. The IDACI uses lower level super output areas that are similar size to electoral wards.

Acorn – a classification of regional neighbourhoods which uses data from the national census information, classifying each UK street as one of 56 categories and uses the whole postcode.

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Trends by year group

Looking deeper into the school data, such as viewing the context information by year group, allows us to build a picture of how the school population is built up or changes. If differences occur, consider if it is as a result of a changing cohort over time.

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