My Lords, I enjoy listening to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, much more in opposition than I ever did when he was a Minister.
I have been looking at the draft of the definition on the DfE website. I think that it has gone way off beam in including in the definition of coasting a measure of absolute performance. Coasting is about relative performance: about not doing well by the kids you have got. If you put a figure in there—you cannot be coasting if you have more than 65% of pupils getting grades A to C, including maths and English—you are leaving out all the schools in the leafy suburbs, grammar schools and schools that are selective in other ways because they have tweaked their educational requirements or are religious schools. They are just as likely to be coasting as schools which deal with a broader range of children. I am very keen that the Government should be clear that coasting is about relative performance and not absolute performance.
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I am also keen that the Government should justify the ideas that they are putting forward on a statistical basis. We are dealing with examinations, particularly at GCSE, which are becoming closer and closer to norm referencing, where there is clearly a limit to the additional percentage of children who can pass in any given year. On listening to some of the people the noble Lord, Lord Nash, put in front of us this week, I have every hope that they will do well with some speed. If schools are doing well, we will therefore find GCSEs getting harder. Under those circumstances, I am worried about the statistical validity of the ideas that the Government are putting forward as a definition of coasting.
There will always be variability. I do not know whether the 0.5 below the median is a reasonable figure, particularly when that seems to take no account of the size of the school, which is obviously very important for the statistical validity. I do not know how a measure of relative performance works in a universe where per se the measure is largely non-referenced. I would like some statistical comfort from the Minister. If not now, I know that he has some very good statisticians back in “Fortress Education” and I would be grateful for a letter.