Adding prior attainment for English and Maths

This article provides guidance on how to record prior attainment for English and Maths for the Autumn School Census, detailing the process for bulk updates, permissions required, and how to manually input or import data. It emphasises the importance of accurate reporting for funding purposes and outlines specific scenarios for students' grades and exemptions.

For the Autumn School Census, prior attainment details of the highest grade achieved in the previous year for Maths GCSE and English GCSE must be recorded.

This can be added from:

• our Students > All Students > Bulk Update > GCSE Attainment for Funding page
• from the GCSE Attainment for Funding section of the student profile

Permissions

You’ll need the School: General Admin: Administer permission to access this area. If you don’t have permission, ask your office team to give it to you using these instructions.

Adding Prior Attainment in bulk

If you have any post-16 students, you need to do the following:

1. Record their prior attainment in English and Maths for the last two years
2. Check and update any attainment that has changed.

These can be done from our Students > All Students > Bulk Update > GCSE Attainment for Funding page.

You'll see two tabs where you can update information from:

• Current - Where you can add details for the current year for your currently enrolled students.
• Leavers (Previous Year) - This will show students that were enrolled in your post-16 last year, but are not enrolled this year so you can fill in their prior attainment details. Top Tip: We'll highlight in red where the Grade at last census is missing or is lower than the current grade.

You can change the academic year drop down to see what was reported in your census in previous years.

Getting this information filled in automatically

• For last year, if you’ve done a census with us before, we may have been able to pull this information in for you. If this information hasn’t pulled through, you’ll need to update it manually (shown below).
• For this year there are two ways to update this information. If you use the Learning Records Service we can pull in the information from there. Select the students then add in your username and password.

We advise attempting the import from LRS option first, as importing from LRS will wipe any other information input on this page.

Manually inputting prior attainment

You can add individual grades by clicking a student’s name, or add this in bulk by ticking students and using the Bulk action button.

In the slide over, fill in the details: 

• Grade - The student's grade. For English, select the grade or No grade recorded if the student took an equivalent qualification.
• Achievement - Has the student qualified in GCSE Maths to the national standard by the end of Year 11?
• Funding exemption - Indicates if the student has taken an alternative equivalent qualification, or is exempt from needing the qualification in order to receive funding.For more guidance on what value you should put in this field, see the DfE’s guidance.
• Grade at last census - The grade reported for the student in the last Autumn school census.

From the student profile

Go to the GCSE Attainment for Funding section of the student profile.

This section will only show for current students in years 11-14, and for students who were in years 12-14 when they left the school.

• It is important to note that the values in this section are set against a student, and not against a student for a specific year.
• The values will need reviewing and updated year on year to ensure the correct fields and values are submitted in the Autumn census, and therefore contribute to the correct ESFA funding.

For example, if this year I set a Year 13 student's Grade and Grade at last census to 3, when next year's Autumn census is run, the Grade at last census for the student (who has now left my school will still be returned as 3 - even if their Grade is upgraded to a 5 after last year's census has concluded. For this student, it is therefore imperative that I also update their Grade at last census to 5. 

Click on a field to open a slide over and add:

• Grade - The student's grade. For English, select the grade or No grade recorded if the student took an equivalent qualification.
• Achievement - Has the student qualified in GCSE Maths to the national standard by the end of Year 11?
• Funding exemption - Indicates if the student has taken an alternative equivalent qualification, or is exempt from needing the qualification in order to receive funding.For more guidance on what value you should put in this field, see the DfE’s guidance.
• Grade at last census - The grade reported for the student in the last Autumn school census.

FAQ

Why are the fields empty when trying to add Grades, Achievements, or Funding exemptions?

If you are unable to input information in any of these fields, please contact the Arbor Support Team if you are directly supported, or your Support Partner to resolve this.

Do we need to add a funding exemption?

If you don’t add in a funding exemption, this will be output in your census as no exemption for any students who are in the school during the academic year that the census takes place in. Queries 3020 and 3030 arise when completing your census when the student has been given a prior attainment grade and the student has not had a funding exemption recorded. You can see how to resolve these here. 

The funding exemption is specifically for explaining why the student does not have qualifications in English or Mathematics. If the students DO have qualifications, no exemption is required.

Which schools need to fill in this information?

This information is required for the Autumn School Census, for schools that have a post-16 as part of their school.

What information is collected in the census?

The DfE expects different combinations of data to be submitted for students based on their enrolment status as of Census Day. The following matrix covers the three scenarios which students may fall into, and the prior attainment data that will be collected for them.

The key point which should be noted is that for students who were in Year 12 or above in the previous year, but are no longer on roll, the Grade field is not collected. If a student who is no longer on roll achieved a higher English or Maths grade after the previous year's Autumn Census, it is vital that this is recorded in the Grade at last census field, as will not be included in the census otherwise.

How should resit results be recorded?

If a student resits and achieves a higher English or Maths grade then this should be recorded differently based on their enrolment status on Autumn Census day.

• For students on roll on Autumn Census day, the higher grade can be recorded in the Grade field, and this will be returned to the DfE via the census.
  
• For students not on roll on Autumn Census day, the higher grade must be recorded in the Grade at last census field in order for this to be returned in the census. Failure to record the higher grade in this field may impact ESFA funding allocated to your school.

Why have exam results not pulled through?

If you have recently moved to Arbor, you may have records of a student's past exam results in the Examinations section or recorded as an assessment.

The GCSE Prior Attainment fields in Arbor aren't linked to the Exams section, so English/Maths attainment information will need to be entered on the page detailed above.

Do we record details for English Literature or Language?

• The Grade collected should be the highest achieved out of the two grades for Literature and Language. This also applies to the Funding Exemption and Grade at last census fields.
• The Achievement field pertains to whether the student has the grade for English Language only.

So you may have a student a Grade as 5, but the Achievement as Learner does not have GCSE English Language (at grade A*-C/9-4) because the Grade was for Literature.

Can we add prior attainment for other subjects?

It isn't possible to record prior attainment here for other subjects. You would need to record these in an Assessment.

Which students appear on the GCSE Attainment for Funding page?

If you have a student appear on this page who is not part of your post-16, this will be because of their age. The GCSE attainment for funding page shows 16-year-olds as of the beginning of the current academic year. This means that students who are retaking year 11, or who are out of age cohort will show on this page.

You can't remove students from this page or manually add an indication in Arbor that they are not part of the post-16 setting. However, we won't return prior attainment for students not in year 12 or 13 in the census, so you can just ignore this student on the page and they won't be returned in your census.

We're getting an Arbor error in our census?

Please see our guidance here: English/Maths grade at last census is lower than the current grade, not set, or set to 'Not Recorded'

I can't see this section on the student profile?

If you can't see the GCSE Attainment for Funding section on the main student profile page, check their enrolment. This section will only show for current students in years 11-14, and for students who were in years 12-14 when they left the school.