The new system is called Attainment 8 and grades students achievements on average across eight subjects including English and Maths.
Education, Sport and Culture started using Attainment 8 internally in 2019, and is now ready to use those statistics publicly.
Pictured: 2022 GCSE students celebrating their results.
ESC said this way ensures the statistics reflect the achievements of all students and will in time track progress, and allow results to be compared with other places.
This also means that when this summer’s GCSE results are published towards the end of August that the number of students achieving five grade 4-9s won’t be announced. This was introduced to replace the old system of announcing how many students achieved a grade C or above.
Instead, alongside Attainment 8, additional indicators will be published which enable further comparisons with other places, and between schools locally, including the percentage of students obtaining a grade 4 in both English and Maths.
The island-wide figures published will include the Attainment 8 average for all schools including the three private colleges, while ESC will also publish the results for each of the States schools together and individually. ESC will also publish how many students achieved which grade in each subject.
The percentage of students obtaining a grade 5 in both English and Maths will also be published, though England does not publish this.
The equivalent data for each year since 2019 will also be published to enable comparison locally with past students. For example the 2022 statistics put the Grammar school at 6.9 and Les Beaucamps at 3.9.
The Attainment 8 in England last year was 4.8.
Now the final selective cohort have sat their GCSEs all of the island’s States run schools will be comprehensive from this September so next year’s Attainment 8 figures are expected to be more broadly similar across the three high schools.
Pictured: This summer’s GCSE results will be the first published using Attainment 8.
Clare Sealy, Head of Education Improvement, said by using the same system as England and Jersey we’ll be able to see how our schools are doing.
“…if you had a baby and they told you the weight in kilograms, unless you’re a medical person you wouldn’t know. So, you’d want to know ‘is that any good or not?’
“In the same way, we want to have comparisons to say how we are doing. And it’s never perfect because England is different from Guernsey, and Guernsey is different from Jersey. We all do things in slightly different ways – which exams we do, whether grant colleges or their equivalents are included or not.
“It’s different between the three jurisdictions, so it’s always approximate but it’s really useful, important to have that sort of information because we want to aspire to be the best we can be.”
Ms Sealy said no one should read too much into this year’s Attainment 8 scores as they are a “sign post not a destination”.
And from January more information will be released under the Attainment 8 system relating to early years and years 3, 6, and 9 in school.
“We would always say that information is a sign post, not the destination. It raises interesting questions. It’s not the be all and end all, and that’s why we have three different ways of doing it. Just because a school gets a better grade than another as a one off, that doesn’t necessarily tell you much about the quality over a long time.”
Pictured: Clare Sealy and Liz Coffey.
“Also the variation within a school is always bigger than the variation between schools and we are still in the transition from a selective to a non selective system,” continued Ms Sealy.
“So it won’t be a surprise to see this year’s results from the Grammar School and Sixth Form Centre, for example, their Attainment 8 score is likely to be better than our States schools, which are probably more comparable with each other. But even then, there will be slight differences and nuances between them.”