Improving the educational attainment of our children and young people
School performance
From September 2024, Ofsted no longer makes overall effectiveness judgements in inspections of state-funded schools. Therefore, previous data regarding the proportion of pupils in good or outstanding schools is no longer calculated.
All state-funded schools receive individual judgements regarding:
- the quality of education
- behaviour and attitudes
- personal development
- leadership and management
Where relevant, schools will also be judged on their Early Years or Sixth Form provision. As a Local Authority, we are developing systems to monitor performance according to these categories, but national comparison data is not currently available. We will also be considering upcoming changes to the Ofsted inspection framework in monitoring school performance.
Pupil attainment
Key Stage 2
In Summer 2024, 56.7% of children attained the expected standard in the combined measure reading, writing and maths by the end of Key Stage 2. This is a 1 percentage point improvement from 2023, just below our statistical neighbour average, and maintains pace with the national upward trend which also increased by 1 percentage point to 61.3%.
| Year | Coventry (%) | Statistical Neighbours (%) | England (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 49.0% | 50.0% | 53.0% |
| 2017 | 58.0% | 57.0% | 61.0% |
| 2018 | 61.8% | 61.6% | 64.4% |
| 2019 | 62.2% | 62.0% | 64.9% |
| 2020 | - | - | - |
| 2021 | - | - | - |
| 2022 | 53.6% | 56.2% | 58.7% |
| 2023 | 55.6% | 57.1% | 59.6% |
| 2024 | 56.7% | 58.0% | 61.3% |
There has also been a continuing focus on improving Careers Education in our schools with ongoing engagement in the Coventry Careers Hub, delivered in partnership with Think Higher (part of the University of Warwick).
All Coventry schools and Further Education (FE) colleges are engaged with the Coventry Careers Hub, supporting them to improve their achievement against the 8 Gatsby benchmarks (national measures for assessing the quality of careers activity provided by schools).
Support from the Coventry Careers Hub helped schools in the city achieve an average of 6.4 benchmarks being attained (compared to a national average of 5.8). 100% of schools achieved at least 3 benchmarks with 87% achieving at least 4 benchmarks and 35% achieving all 8 benchmarks.
The Local Authority continues to work with schools within the Coventry Education Partnership to identify impactful opportunities for collaboration in school improvement. One such area is the Primary Aspirations Strategy where a steering group oversees a number of projects including the flagship Coventry Primary Aspirations Week event.
Case study
March 2025 saw the second Coventry Primary Aspirations Week take place and it was even bigger and better than in 2024.
Over 3,000 primary school children took part in the week’s events, with volunteers from businesses and organisations across Coventry visiting schools and/or hosting events to talk about job roles, what the organisations do, and to encourage the children to think about their possible careers in the future.
The children, aged between 7 and 11, were given the opportunity to learn about things in a fun way. For example, National Grid gave an insight into their world of work using an interactive app “Now Press Play” which provided a really engaging way of getting children to live the experience of a National Grid employee.
Councillor Dr Kindy Sandhu, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, said:
“It’s really great to see how Primary Aspirations Week has expanded so much for this year. Once again, the feedback we’ve received from schools and children has been nothing but positive. We really wanted to give more children an opportunity to think about their futures and imagine the types of careers they might want to pursue. We know that children’s aspirations are shaped by their life experiences, so we wanted to create an event that gave children an insight into what they could go onto do after school.”
The Primary Aspirations week was launched to coincide with National Careers Week, which aims to support young people in their awareness of future career pathways.
Jo Stanley, the headteacher at Little Heath Primary School, which played host one of the events, said:
“It was a fabulous opportunity for primary children to hear from external speakers who brought their own experiences and skillset to inspire the children. The morning had an immediate impact on the children to think about their own skills and future aspirations outside of the classroom too. Providing opportunities for children to see and hear that they can set goals for their future career, and they do come true, is invaluable for all Coventry pupils.”
Key Stage 4
In 2024 we saw an improvement in the Key Stage 4 results closing the gap with the national position for all attainment measures. Attainment 8 score is the average measure of an individual student's attainment across their 8 best performing subjects taken at GCSE level.
The Attainment 8 score of individual students is then used to help calculate each school and the local authorities’ overall Attainment 8 score. In Summer 2024, the Attainment 8 score for schools in Coventry was 44.3. This is an improvement from 2023, is above statistical neighbours (43.2) and the gap with the national average has closed (England 46.1).
Progress 8 is a 'value-added' measure that indicates how much a secondary school has helped pupils improve (or progress) over a 5-year period. In Summer 2024, the Progress 8 score for schools in Coventry was +0.01. This is now better than both the national (-0.03) and statistical neighbour (-0.14) averages.
