Aireville School

Jesson Banding and The War Room

Your child’s success is of paramount importance to everyone at Aireville School.  We have, therefore, developed a new tracking system which every Year 11 student will be introduced to during the early part of this Autumn 2010 term.  The ‘War Room’ has been created by Assistant Headteacher, Andrew Lavery, who explains below what exactly the banding and ‘War Room’ are all about.

Jesson Bands were originally designed by David Jesson, a mathematician from York University, who has worked since the 1980s on school data and has tried to find ways of predicting what a student should achieve at GCSE based on scores in their Key Stage 2 SATs at primary school.

He is trying to achieve success with a system that is so reliable that every school in the country uses it to estimate and, therefore, predict how well their students should do at GCSE.

The Jesson approach looks at a students’ profile of prior attainment based on the results of their Key Stage 2 tests at age 11 and links these scores to outcomes at GCSE. Jesson found these scores to be the very best predictor of a student’s performance at GCSE.

Jesson also found that it was much better to get the actual test score for the English, Mathematics and Science test papers and then turned them into point scores:

• The fine level multiplied by 6
• If you achieved Level 4.25 on your English test it was worth 4.25 x 6 = 25.5 points.

Then, in order to achieve an overall picture Jesson took the average scores of the three tests and turned this into an Average Point Score (APS).  Please see the diagrams below.

Band 1 was said to be of high ability and stood a 96% chance of achieving 5 A* – C or equivalent at Key Stage 4.

Band 2 was said to be of above average ability and stood an 84% chance of achieving 5 A* – C or equivalent at Key Stage 4.

Band 3 was said to be of average ability and stood a 60% chance of achieving 5 A* – C or equivalent at Key Stage 4.

Band 4 was said to be of below average ability and stood a 30% chance of achieving 5 A* – C or equivalent at Key Stage 4.

Band 5 was said to be of low ability and stood a 10% chance of achieving 5 A* – C or equivalent at Key Stage 4.

How have Jesson Bands helped us?

• Students in Year 9 have been offered differing pathway options to support their learning and attainment at Key Stage 4

 

• Students in Year 11 have been identified as underachieving and intervention programmes have put in place accordingly.

 

• Groups of students have been identified as underachieving in Maths and English and support programmes have been implemented accordingly.

If you would like to know more about the Jesson Banding and the War Room please do not hesitate to contact Andrew Lavery, Assistant Headteacher on admin@aireville.n-yorks.sch.uk. or ask your child if he/she has visited the War Room recently.