Some secondary schools have ‘lost’ up to 46% of their pupils without causing any alarm to Ofsted inspectors

Where did all the GCSE pupils go – and why has no one noticed?

When Ofsted inspectors published a report on Hewens College in Hillingdon, west London, in January 2016, they gave it a clean bill of health. Leadership and management were impressive, teachers had high expectations of their charges and the education provided overall was adjudged “good”. Any school would be proud of such a report.

However, one striking fact was not mentioned. The year group that had taken GCSEs the previous summer, and on whom much of the school’s latest achievement data was based, was only just over half the size it had been when these pupils joined the school in 2010.

For while 44 girls and 41 boys – 85 in total – had started out at Hewens in year 7, by the time they reached year 11, only 24 girls and 22 boys remained. This was a 46% drop, a loss of 39 pupils – well over a full class group. Neither was it a one-off: Hewens’ 2014 GCSE cohort was 31% smaller than it had been in year 7.

Where had these young people gone? Why were the changes in the 2014 and 2015 GCSE year groups not commented on in any detail in the Ofsted report?

These are questions raised by an Education Guardian investigation that shows school year groups can shrink dramatically without Ofsted inspectors even noticing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest GCSE league tables only include the results of pupils who were in the school in the January of their GCSE year. Photograph: Alamy

Earlier this month, Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director, said that from now on inspectors should question headteachers during inspections when large numbers of students have left. And Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector, described “off-rolling”, alongside other results-boosting methods, as a scandal.

Our investigation shows that even though the inspectorate recognised this as a national problem going back to 2010, it has not done anything about it.

The research organisation Education Datalab recently published reports on pupils leaving their secondary schools, following an investigation by Education Guardian in 2014. It raised concerns that 20,000 pupils were being lost to state education altogether, with no one knowing where they had gone. The reports do not show whether pupils were encouraged to move or left of their own volition. Those who had disappeared were mostly lower achievers.

GCSE league tables include the results of pupils who were in the school in the January of their GCSE year, so a loss of low-achieving students between year 7 and the January of year 11 can boost a school’s results and league table ranking.

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Datalab’s figures allowed the production of an alternative league table showing the difference that would be seen in schools’ results and rankings if all pupils were included who had started at a school in year 7. Hewens College topped the national list, with a 16 percentage point drop in its GCSE scores if its former pupils were included.

Hewens College is part of a multi-academy trust that includes another secondary school and two “studio schools” – small institutions offering work-orientated education to 14 to 19-year-olds. Pupils here can switch school at age 14, with Hewens College focusing on humanities subjects. Another school in the trust, Rosedale College, specialises in sciences, and the studio schools offer vocational courses, from construction to hair and beauty, law and “languages for business”.

Hewens did not respond to requests to talk about the issue, but the trust, Rosedale Hewens academy trust, has said before that pupils moved “simply due to their choice of options”.

Of the 30 schools with the largest drop in GCSE scores when pupils who had left were included, we found eight that had been inspected since 2015. None of the Ofsted reports mentions in detail the changes in numbers.

Looking at official DfE schools census data for every school in England, we found 10 that had been inspected recently whose GCSE year group was at least 20% smaller in 2016 than when the cohort joined in 2012.

None of the inspection reports referred to the change in numbers. These schools included two – Mark Hall academy in Harlow, Essex, and Brighton Aldridge community academy, East Sussex – where the year group was almost a third smaller than it had been when the children entered the school.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw with pupils at a school in Birmingham in 2012. Photograph: Andrew Fox

The league tables are not the only cause for concern. In July 2015, the then chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said children could be put at risk of harm or exploitation by the failure of schools and local authorities to track those taken out of school. These children could be at risk of radicalisation, he said. Ofsted produced national reports on children “missing” from education in 2010 and 2013.

Nicholas Marshall, a former headteacher now studying for a doctorate at Sheffield Hallam University on the effects of England’s results-driven accountability systems on pupils, says our findings reinforce his view that inspectors generally take school data at face value, without enough scrutiny. “If I was a parent, I would want them asking very serious questions about pupils leaving schools,” he says.

Peter Atherton, a school data manager at Minsthorpe Community College near Wakefield, west Yorkshire, who blogs about schools’ results-boosting strategies, says Ofsted needs a different system to be able to strengthen its scrutiny on pupil numbers.

“It’s going to be tricky for inspectors to pick up on even large changes in cohort numbers because their data systems are not presenting the information for them. Whoever designs [the data systems used by Ofsted] needs to look at the change in cohort numbers and present that information so it is easily available,” says Atherton.

Ofsted has not announced what steps will be taken to help inspectors drill into the figures and compare several years’ data to see what is happening to missing children. They will not be given any more time to investigate this issue.

An Ofsted spokesman says: “If inspectors have any concerns about … potential ‘off-rolling’ they will discuss them with the senior leadership team, and consider the impact when judging the effectiveness of the school’s leadership and management, and outcomes for pupils.”

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Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, says: “It is very good that Ofsted is taking note of the issue now. But the question is why they were not alert to it before. If Ofsted inspections were valid and reliable, they would have picked up on this when it was happening, not waited for several years of pupils leaving schools for in many cases very uncertain futures.”

Maggie Atkinson, former children’s commissioner for England, says: “I’m disappointed rather than surprised by Ofsted not picking up on cohort changes before. I hope this will change now.”

In 2013 Atkinson published a report on school exclusions that found “several hundred” schools were likely to be acting illegally in taking pupils off roll without it being formally recorded, and made 10 recommendations. Atkinson believes questions must now be asked whether some schools are still doing this. “Ofsted needs to really investigate, using changes in pupil rolls as a starting point,” she says. “If there are heads out there under pressure to remove children from their rolls, many must be beside themselves with worry. It’s not what people go into the profession for.”

All schools named in this article were invited to respond.