Page 16 - ELG2410 October Issue 492

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UK RANKINGS 2024-2025

The new rankings explained

How have the rankings changed this year? Read on for a full explanation…

his introduction of new inspections It does, though, still insist on fully qualified that a centre which received an area
standards for Academic Staff academic management. of strength for academic staff profile
Profiles in 2024 poses a major Inspectors are now asked to decide whether under the new system would have achieved
Tproblem for the Gazette rankings; the qualifications and experience of the one under the old? The example below
the new standards are so different that we teaching team are ‘appropriate’, ‘largely suggests not:
have had to redesign our rankings, to reduce appropriate’, or ‘clearly appropriate’ to the
the disadvantage posed to centres inspected particular context—a much more subjective Example two
before 2024. measurement. In March 2024, a large chain-owned
The old system covered educational It can also result in inspection comments language school, specialising in general
level (degree or equivalent), teacher which are likely to be incomprehensible English for students aged 16+ received an
qualification level (approved initial to the average non-English speaker. Area of Strength in Academic Staff Profile.
training or fully qualified), and academic We ran the example below, taken from a All the teachers are recorded as having a
management teacher qualification. Most recent inspection, through a CEFR level standard Initial Teaching qualifications but
of this could easily be checked on the checker—it was judged as C2 (IELTS 8+): none were fully qualified. Their educational
accompanying data. attainment is not mentioned. The team
This fits in with the standard approach Example one profile was judged ‘clearly appropriate to the
to measuring teacher qualification in ‘The academic staff team has a professional organisation’s context’.
mainstream education research and are profile (qualifications and experience) that In March 2019, a school belonging to
generally correlated with better teaching is appropriate to the school’s context. The the same organisation was not awarded a
quality, even at pre-school level (see box recruitment and support policy is effectively strength in this area under the old system,
for details). devised and implemented in line with the stated even though three of its teachers were fully
The new system ignores educational level course objectives and the student profile.’ qualified, the other 16 all had standard
altogether and accepts non-standard initial In a new, more nuanced, but more Initial Training, and 80% of them were
training, plus other professional qualifications. subjective system, can we be sure educated to degree level.

16 October 2024