Progress of Pupils at Aston Fields Middle School

‘Pupils make outstanding progress from their average starting points on entry to the school. Their attainment is well above average when they move on to high school. Achievement is outstanding in both English and mathematics, and strong in other subjects as well.’ Ofsted

We are proud of the outstanding progress that pupils make in all year groups at Aston Fields Middle School. Please see below for further evidence.

It is important to remember that as a middle school, the progress pupils make must be judged from the time they join the school in Year 5 to when the leave in Year 8. There is a problem nationally with how the DfE judges middle schools as the only national comparator they use is based on progress from KS1 (end of Year 2) to KS2 (end of Year 6). This is not a fair way of judging pupils’ progress in a middle school and is something the National Middle Schools Forum has been challenging the DfE about for many years. The reason the DfE’s judgement of progress in middle schools is unfair is because 50% of the progress measure they use relates to Years 3 and 4 when pupils are NOT attending middle school. It also takes no account of the progress pupils make in Years 7 and 8 (KS3). Ofsted are aware of this issue and the need to judge middle schools from entry to exit.

Aston Fields Middle School uses robust, rigorous and externally benchmarked, moderated and validated assessments to judge the progress pupils make across their four years at this school from entry to exit. The quality of this data has been corroborated by Ofsted and the DfE, and acknowledged as credible to use when making judgements about middle schools. The data shown below is based on this.

Progress of pupils leaving Aston Fields Middle School in July 2022

Progress of pupils leaving Aston Fields Middle School in July 2021 (NB. 2020 data unavailable due to COVID-19)