In education, ‘value-added’ is a term that takes into account the starting point of each pupil and compares it to their actual outcomes. It offers a fairer and more accurate measure of a school’s performance than exam results on their own.

At Heritage, we use standardised assessments to measure the starting point of each pupil, helping us to evaluate how pupils think in areas that are known to make a difference to learning such as verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, and spatial reasoning. This helps us evaluate our own judgments about pupil attainment and potential relative to national standards, and we use them to monitor pupil progress over time.

Based upon these standardised assessments, a ‘most likely score’ for each I/GCSE subject is determined. This most likely score is then compared to actual exam results when we have them. So for example, if the standardised assessment score predicts a likely I/GCSE result of 6.2 for a particular subject, and the actual result for that subject is 6.6, the value-added is determined to be +0.4.

For 2024 exam results, the average value-added score for Heritage School was an impressive +1.38 meaning that, on average, Heritage added 1.38 points to every pupil’s exam results, across all subjects. Our seven-year average, the years for which we have data, is +1.3. Taking every I/GCSE exam into account over the last nine years (since our first Year 11 leavers in 2016), 73% of all results have been 9-7 (A*-A).

Of course, Heritage adds far more value, and in more important ways, than merely to exam results. That said, our theory when we started in 2007 was that if we created the right culture, including one which prized robust intellectual development for its own sake, then our pupils would tend to do well in public examinations. And they do.