Value Added

St. Mary’s College has an outstanding record in improving the academic performance of pupils, consistently achieving in the top 5% nationally for ‘Value Added’.

Value Added is an academic measure of the progress pupils make from the time they start school to the examination grades they achieve at the end of their school career. It reflects the extent to which the educational experience enhances pupils’ knowledge, abilities and skills at public examinations beyond predicted levels.

Alongside our excellent public examination results, we believe Value Added to be one of the best measures of the quality of the education we provide. As one of our students commented “I would never have achieved the grades I did at a different school.”

GCSE predictions are based on independent aptitude tests set by Durham University which pupils take at the start of Year 7 (MidYIS) and Year 10 (YELLIS). A Level predictions are based on pupils’ GCSE results.

Predictions are used as a guide only and they are by no means a ceiling. To us and our pupils, they represent a target to beat!

We are very proud of the fact that our pupils regularly outperform their grade predictions, in some cases by as much as 3 grades, i.e. C predicted, A* achieved.