As a parent (and educator) it forces you to question whether your child’s school is genuinely adding value. We need a robust ‘value add’ accountability metric.

In English state secondary schools, Progress 8 attempts to do this, but controversial practices like off-rolling students and the narrow subject focus cause its validity to be questioned. For parents at least, it is largely ignored.

Key Stage 2 Progress ‘value add’ measures in primary schools have been shelved. Who knows what will emerge to replace them.

In private schools, no value-added measures seemingly exist. That feels extraordinary. As fees rise, customers increasingly want to know they are getting value for money. In a world where one-to-one personalised AI tutors are likely to be delivering the bulk of academic content, how will your school prove what value add it provides beyond the technology you’ve supplied?

Historically, fee-charging schools’ USP has been based around the personalisation of teaching. But what is more personalised than a one-to-one tutor? One of your significant value-added ‘rugs’ has the risk of being pulled from under you.

The Strategic Imperative: For all schools, fee charging or not, the answer to demonstrating value add lies in moving beyond academic attainment. We must develop and measure the core competencies that truly define a successful, lifelong learner. These are the skills that enable students to adapt and thrive in an AI-influenced future – to utilise knowledge to think creatively and critically, and solve novel problems.

At Thinking Matters, we champion and support schools in the strategic development of these deeper thinking skills and the intelligent learning behaviours that are the true measure of future readiness. We provide the framework and tools for schools to make these critical competencies explicit, measurable, and integrated into their culture.

This is why we developed Meta-Mirrors: an assessment tool designed to capture clear, actionable data on a student’s growth in this vital, wider range of skills. It allows you to move beyond current value-add measures to quantify your most significant impact.

Don’t let your school’s most transformative work go unmeasured. Start demonstrating the future-ready competencies your stakeholders now demand.