Value-added 'Progress' measures are to be introduced for all English schools in 2016 as 'headline' measures of school performance. This move comes despite research highlighting high levels of instability in value-added measures and concerns about the omission of contextual variables in the planned measure. This article studies the impact of disregarding contextual factors, the stability of school scores across time and the consistency of value-added performance for different cohorts within schools at a given point in time. The first two analyses replicate and extend previous studies using current data, confirming concerns about intake biases and showing that both secondary and primary level value-added measures exhibit worrying levels of instability. The third analysis goes further by examining whether instability across time is likely to stem from differences between cohorts and whether measures based on a single cohort reflect school performance more generally. Combined, these analyses suggest a general problem of imprecision within value-added estimates and that current policy use of value-added is unjustified. Published school performance measures are likely to be profoundly misleading, in particular for those unfamiliar with the level of uncertainty in the estimates. The article closes by considering whether value-added measures could and should be used by policy-makers as measures of school performance.

Feedback is an integral part of education and there is a substantial body of trials exploring and confirming its effect on learning. This evidence base comes mostly from studies of compulsory school age children; there is very little evidence to support effective feedback practice at higher education, beyond the frameworks and strategies advocated by those claiming expertise in the area. This systematic review aims to address this gap. We review causal evidence from trials of feedback and formative assessment in higher education. Although the evidence base is currently limited, our results suggest that low stakes‐quizzing is a particularly powerful approach and that there are benefits for forms of peer and tutor feedback, although these depend on implementation factors. There was mixed evidence for praise, grading and technology‐based feedback. We organise our findings into several evidence‐grounded categories and discuss the next steps for the field and evidence‐informed feedback practice in universities.

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