Value Added score on League Tables...What does it actually mean?

[wheresthebeach]

Does anyone understand this figure?...at DD school the value added is 101.3 - just how much above expected progress does this mean? What does it mean in terms of a child individual attainment? I know it means children made more than expected progress but by how much? A sublevel?
I'm

[lljkk]

Off top of my head...
Variations of 0.5 to 0.75 are statistically meaningless. So 101.3 is effectively the same as 100.6 to 102.
To know what it means in terms of sublevels difference you'd need to look at underlying data (disaggregated).
It means nothing about individuals.
It's supposed to tell you how much on average that group has improved, compared to all other groups that are similar ability with similar social background. 100 means about typical improvement, below is not as good as typical and above 100 means more improvement than usual.

VAM is supposed to measure teaching but really it still mostly measures the social background and parental involvement.

[wheresthebeach]

Thanks for the guidance. Have drilled down and can see the difference between number of students that were on target in ks1 v on target or above for ks2 so that now makes sense.