ABSTRACT
The assessment of a school's 'value-added' characteristics has developed more rapidly in Britain than anywhere else in the world, and is being routinely applied in a wide variety of contexts – from rural counties such as Shropshire and West Sussex to metropolitan districts such as Barnsley, Wakefield and Wolverhampton. The key aspect of using information in a value-added context is to identify what are the reasons why pupils' examination outcomes differ, and hence to establish what are 'reasonable' expectations of pupils with differing characteristics. Differences over and above these need to be assessed and associated with the particular effects which school membership has on each school's pupils. The following six factors have emerged consistently: pupils 'prior attainment score, gender, socio-economic factors, the season of a pupil's birth, the number of examinations entered, and the actual subjects taken in examinations.
