Why ‘value added’​ is the most important measure of academic success

Tuesday 7 May 2019

GSAL’s Media Society came up with this entertaining short animation to explain the importance of ‘value added’ and how it can help students to exceed expectations.

The Grammar School at Leeds (GSAL) is an excellent school with excellent staff and facilities and – most importantly – excellent students who leave with excellent outcomes.

One measure of this excellence is the sheer number of top grades: in 2018, 51% of A-level grades awarded were at A/A* and 72% of GCSE grades at 7/8/9.

We are proud that so many of our students achieve these gold standards of academic excellence. However, for me, this is not the most important marker of how well our students achieve academically: that accolade is reserved for ‘value added’.

Put simply, value added is a measure of distance travelled. It is about how far students have come from their starting points, so it provides a fair analysis of how ALL students have done: including, but not exclusively, those at the very top. This is something that the state sector has understood for many years, and it is good to see an increasing emphasis on the measure in the independent sector.

Why do I like value added so much? Well, let’s take student X who achieved the A* they were always on track to achieve. Undeniably, student X has done very well and that success should be celebrated. As a school though, all we have done is ensure that student X was kept on the right track and did not underachieve: we added no value.

Compare this to student Y who, upon joining us, looked to be on track for a C/B grade but left with an A grade. While, in terms of raw results, this student may not seem to have done as well as student X, the distance travelled was greater. With the school’s support, student Y made excellent progress in relation to the starting points: in short, that A grade shows excellent value added.

So how does GSAL do in terms of value added? In 2018 the school was placed in the top 5% nationally for adding value at A-level, according to data produced by the Advanced Level Performance System (ALPS) – a national provider of value added analysis. Both our internal tracking and analysis of our examination results by external bodies confirms our excellent performance in A-level… and our value added at GCSE is even better!

As teachers, we firmly believe that every child matters, and so we must use a results analysis tool which promotes this ideology. ‘Value added’ values every student.