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KS5: Where to find Core Baselines (Admin)

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This article aims to explain which official KS4 core baselines are required for calculating L3 Value Added and L2 Progress in the KS5 reports and where to find these. For information on preparing and importing these, see our article here.

KS4 core baselines are the official points, or challenge points, awarded to students at the end of Y11. These must be imported appropriately within Analytics to ensure that headline figures are calculated accurately and in line with DfE guidance, such as L3 Value Added.

There are four types of baselines you can import for each student, listed below for each performance measure.

L3 Value Added

To produce L3VA, you would need to import the following average points scores, ideally to 4 decimal places:

  • KS4 APS GCSE (used for A Level and Academic qualifications)
  • KS4 APS All (used for Applied General qualifications)

Q: What is the difference between ‘KS4 APS GCSE’ and ‘KS4 APS All’?

A: ‘KS4 APS GCSE’ includes GCSE qualifications, such as 9-1 qualifications, unreformed A*-G qualifications and any AS Levels taken at KS4, whereas ‘KS4 APS All’ will additionally include vocational qualifications, such as BTECs.

 

L2 English & Maths Progress / L3 Maths

For L2 English and Maths Progress and L3 Maths figures, you would need to import the following core baselines as challenge points:

  • KS4 English Prior (their best from English Language or English Literature)
  • KS4 Maths Prior

The challenge points associated to eligible KS4 qualifications change between 2019 and 2020, and the table for GCSE 9-1 can be found below.

For 19/20 and later cohorts, as the challenge points are the same as the student’s grade (i.e. a GCSE grade 9 = 9 challenge points) you can simply import their GCSE grade in English and Maths from KS4.

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However, if your students took a different qualification at KS4, you should import the associated challenge points from the DfE’s spreadsheet, which you can find here.

Where can I find my students' core baselines?

For past leavers cohorts that were officially reported on by the DfE, you can use the L3 VA Student and Qualification Level Data (Level3VAReport.csv) in the DfE’s Tables Checking Exercise.

For current year 13 and year 12 cohorts, you should be able to export these from Get Information About Pupils (GIAP). To do this, you would need to upload your student’s UPNs into GIAP and then the data should be available to download, where you can use columns:

  • KS4_PTSPE_PTQ_EE for your students' KS4 APS All
  • KS4_GPTSPE_PTQ_EE for their KS4 APS GCSE

For more detailed steps on formatting your file from GIAP, please see our article here.

For 21/22 & 22/23 cohorts the baselines may not available on Get Information About Pupils (GIAP) due to the cohorts not officially being reported on. As such, we would instead recommend manually calculating their baselines, further information on which is available in our article linked below:

Manually Calculating L3VA Core Baselines (Admins)

Please note – GIAP may only include students who studied Y11 in 2022 (for 23/24 Leavers) or Y11 in 2023 (for 24/25 Leavers). As such, if you need to calculate your students' baselines manually (to check this is accurate), feel free to see our article linked above.

KS4 Prior English and Maths

You may be able to find these in your MIS, from the student’s previous school or, if available, you could export their grade points from the KS3/4 reports within Analytics (Basics Area - Contribution report).

 

Thanks for reading!

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