Headline grades are an important part of academic success, but they do not tell the whole story.
As a proudly non-selective school, Sedbergh welcomes pupils with a wide range of abilities, experiences and academic starting points. Our responsibility is not simply to record where pupils finish. It is to help each one make meaningful progress during their time with us.
We therefore look carefully at both attainment and progress. Final grades matter, but so does the distance a pupil has travelled, the confidence they have developed and the opportunities their education has opened.
“What interests us is taking a pupil in their current form and helping them to progress. If we can help a pupil achieve one or perhaps two grades higher than predicted, then that is us doing our job as teachers and educators.” Robin Pyper, Headmaster
Value added is one way of understanding the progress a pupil makes between an earlier academic starting point and their final results.
Baseline assessments and prior attainment are used to estimate the grades a pupil might be expected to achieve. These predictions are then compared with their eventual examination results.
Where a pupil achieves beyond that initial prediction, the result indicates positive value added.
In simple terms, attainment tells us where a pupil finishes. Value added helps us understand how far they have travelled.
Imagine two pupils who achieve the same A-level grade.
One may have entered the Sixth Form already expected to achieve that result. The other may have begun with a more modest academic profile and made substantial progress through consistent effort, strong teaching and targeted support.
The final grade is the same, but the journey is different.
Traditional results tables primarily record attainment. They can show how many pupils achieved particular grades, but they do not fully reveal the progress behind those outcomes.
For a non-selective school, this distinction matters. A school that admits pupils with very high prior attainment may record strong headline results without necessarily demonstrating how much additional progress those pupils have made.
Our aim is not to compare pupils with one another, but to help each pupil fulfil more of their own potential.
Value-added measures are usually based on standardised assessments, prior examination results or other baseline information.
These provide an indication of the outcome a pupil might be expected to achieve. Once final results are available, actual performance is compared with that prediction.
Different qualifications, data providers and assessment systems may calculate progress in slightly different ways. Cohort size and the profile of an individual year group can also influence the figures.
For that reason, value-added data should not be viewed in isolation or treated as a perfect measure of a school.
Value added is important, but it is not the only measure of academic success.
A pupil’s education cannot be reduced to a single statistic. Alongside progress data and final results, we also value engagement with learning and the development of intellectual qualities and attributes that will help to support their success beyond school.
Robin Pyper describes these qualities as central to a Sedbergh education:
“Collaboration, curiosity, effort and attitude towards learning are far more important than a single result. As young people go out into the world of work, those qualities will be significant determinants of success.”
Being non-selective does not mean being less ambitious.
Ambition is one of Sedbergh’s core values and sits at the heart of our approach to academic life. We want pupils to aim high, apply themselves fully and recognise that progress is rarely entirely linear.
There will be moments of success and periods of difficulty. Our role is to challenge pupils appropriately, support them when they encounter setbacks and help them develop the confidence to keep moving forward.
Academic ambition at Sedbergh means helping every pupil achieve.
Results days inevitably bring attention to grades, percentages and comparisons between schools. Those results deserve to be celebrated, but they remain one moment within a much longer journey.
A fuller understanding of success considers where pupils go next, whether they have secured a destination that is right for them and how well prepared they are to succeed there.
For some pupils, that may be Oxford or another Russell Group university. For others, it may be a specialist degree, an international university, a degree apprenticeship or a different pathway altogether.
What matters is that pupils leave Sedbergh with direction, confidence and the ability to make constructive use of everything they have learned.
“What really matters is what pupils can then go on to do with everything they have learned here.” Robin Pyper, Headmaster
