Thresholds, benchmarks and metric ranges

The longer you spend in education – and I am just shy of forty years as a teacher, headteacher, consultant and director of TSO Education – the more you realise how hotly contested is language.

I remember, as a Vice Principal and Headteacher, the lengthy conversations we had about data collection: are we entering current grades, predicted grades or forecast grades. They all mean something intrinsically different.

In the world of integrated curriculum and financial planning we have similar debates. For instance, are we using thresholds or benchmarks. The major difference here is whether we are measuring ourselves against other schools or against ranges which have been identified as ‘ideals’. To clarify:

• Benchmark ranges compare the school against other similar schools and show how far away it is from the mean.
• Thresholds indicate the ranges that have been identified as the ideal range for each benchmark.

The challenges of developing a threshold range are numerous:

• What procedure do you use for determining the threshold range? Does it start with a benchmark? Then what?
• The threshold needs to be determined by an expert, or a team of experts. Those experts, however, are not going to be an expert in the specific school or schools you wish to complete the ICFP analysis on.
• There are a lot of reasons why you may want to be outside the threshold ranges. These may be either because of the school’s specific context or around the individual approach in the school.

At ICFP.school we take a third approach which we call metric ranges. In our tool you are able to tailor the comparative schools by the following filters:

• Age range – for instance sixth forms, middle schools, infant schools and junior schools.
• FSM%
• Pupil numbers
• Pupils with SEND
• Pupils with EHCPs
• EAL pupils
• Ofsted outcomes
• Pupil progress

This means you can compare yourself with other schools that are genuinely similar.

Our ranges are based on the difference from the mean and so shift according to context. This means we aren’t defining a particular approach, but rather allowing schools to make informed decisions.

There are no correct ranges. But knowing where you fit in against other schools allows you to make data driven, strategic decisions about becoming the school you want to be and the school your pupils deserve.