The Department for Education (DfE) has released the provisional averages for the 2023 Attainment 8 scores. These figures are preliminary, as the Attainment 8 averages are subject to modification between October and February due to students submitting papers for remarking and appealing their grades.

Since the 2022 Attainment 8 averages are utilised to estimate the predicted P8 scores for students and schools regarding Pupil Progress, we have revised our platform to reflect the most precise data, incorporating the updated scores released in October 2023. We have examined the variations between the provisional scores from October 2022 and the revised figures from February 2023. The overall Attainment 8 average has decreased by 3.38 between 2023 provisional scores and the 2022 revised scores.

This indicates that, on average, students have lowered their Attainment 8 score by 3.38 grades across their ten P8 contributing subjects (with Maths and English counting twice).

To provide some context, this is comparable to two-thirds of all 2023 students receiving one grade lower in three of their subjects and one-third experiencing a drop of one grade in four subjects, in comparison to students with the same KS2 prior attainment in 2022.

Essentially, yes. Ofqual was required to reduce the number of students achieving higher grades to align the distribution of grades more closely with the levels seen in 2019, before the pandemic. The Teacher Assessed Grades awarded in 2020 and 2021 led to a significant rise in higher grades, so Ofqual was tasked with gradually bringing the distribution down over two years, in 2022 and 2023.

This is reflected in the lower Attainment 8 scores of students with the same KS2 scaled score between 2022 and 2023.

The update could result in your school's P8 prediction increasing by up to around 3.38. However, before you get too optimistic, it’s important to note that this increase is unlikely to be the full 3.38, as it will depend on several factors:

• The average KS2 scaled score of your cohort

• The number of students who were already below the 2022 minimum threshold (capped) value

• The number of students who now fall under the 2023 capped value

The minimum threshold value is used to prevent individual students with very low P8 scores from disproportionately affecting the overall P8 score. For instance, if a student has a P8 score of -7.06, the higher (less negative) capped score will be applied instead. This threshold is also influenced by a student’s KS2 scaled score and has increased by an average of 0.03.