The Department for Education had explored alternative options, but concluded there is ‘no replacement’ for progress 8 measure.

There will be no progress 8 replacement for the next two years (2024-25 and 2025-26) due to the lack of SATs data from the pandemic.

It will instead continue to “publish the remaining headline attainment, entry and destination measures and return to publishing time-series”.

But they will continue to provide the most recent available progress 8 scores – so for 2023-24 and 2022-23.

Primary SATs being cancelled in 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to the pandemic means there is no key stage two prior attainment data to calculate the progress 8 measure for those cohorts.

DfE said it intends to return to progress 8 in 2026-27, when key stage 2 data is available again.

Ofsted will continue to consider a range of data provided in the inspection data summary report, including about the school’s cohort. There is “no single piece of data will determine the outcome of any Ofsted judgement”.

This means schools will be judged on exam attainment regardless of context. Schools where progress 8 is improving will feel particularly hard done by.

Many educators feel this is a missed opportunity to rethink performance tables, and once again highlights why current accountability metrics should be reformed to cover a wider range of information looking broader than just exam results.

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DfE – Guide for maintained secondary schools, academies and free schools

National P8 avergae for England in 2022/23 was -0.03. Regional breakdowns are below.