The Harris Group

The government’s Department for Education has published data about the academic achievements of students taking their GCSEs last summer.

GCSE students at Harris:

• Nearly 4 in 10 (38%) of our Year 11 students came from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, compared to a quarter (26%) of the cohort nationally;
• A third (32%) of our Year 11 students did not have English as their first language, compared to 18% nationally.

Yet, despite these challenges, our students outperformed the national average on every headline measure:

• They made more progress: Our Progress 8 score of +o.32 shows our students made above average progress based on how they did in their GCSEs compared to their level of achievement when they last sat national assessments at the end of primary school;
• Their attainment was higher: Attainment 8 at Harris – which is calculated by totalling the GCSE scores of pupils in 8 key subjects – is 49.8%, compared to 46.3 nationally;
• They studied for a demanding set of qualifications: Our students are nearly twice as likely to enter for the English Baccalaureate (72% at Harris compared with 39% nationally), and they go on to achieve a higher average point score (4.62 at Harris compared with 4.05 nationally);
• They did better in maths and English: 50% of our students achieve a strong pass in English and maths, compared with 45% nationally.

The performance of disadvantaged students at Harris:

The government’s data also provides the information about the performance of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, both nationally and within individual academy trusts.

With the majority of our academies located in areas of high socioeconomic disadvantage, a high-quality education is key to the futures of our students.

The data from last summer shows that disadvantaged students at Harris make more progress as a result of their education:

• Nationally, disadvantaged students end up, on average, with GCSE results that are lower than they should have been based on their academic starting points when they began secondary school.  Their Progress 8 score nationally is a negative number, -0.57.
• At Harris in 2023, the Progress 8 score for our disadvantaged students was a positive number, +0.01.  Our federation was one of only two large multi-academy trusts achieving this.

Nationally, the disadvantage gap, which indexes the difference in GCSE attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, is, at 3.94, at its highest level since 2011.  The disadvantage gap at Harris is 2.18, significantly lower than the national gap.