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The Department for Education believes that comparing similar schools’ performance based on the ethnicity of pupils could risk a legal challenge, 91���� understands.

From September, the DfE and Ofsted will identify groups of similar schools to help measure performance but looking at the ethnicity of students will not be part of this process.

The DfE said that a range of factors were considered in producing a model that explained variation in attainment between schools. Pupil ethnicity has been excluded because the DfE said it only added “modestly” to the comparison model.

91���� understands that legal concerns were also a factor in the decision not to take pupil ethnicity into account in the similar-school comparisons.

Because race is a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act, the DfE did not want to promote the idea that the ethnicity of school pupils should change the expectations for them.

The government thought that doing this could invite a legal challenge.

Comparing ‘similar schools’

Ofsted will include this similar-schools data in the inspection data summary report (IDSR) from the 2026-27 autumn term.

The aim is to help schools benchmark their performance against schools with similar intakes through a new DfE digital platform, which will also be rolled out in the autumn term.

A school will be compared to a group of around 50 statistical “nearest neighbours”, those with similar characteristics.

The factors in identifying similar schools will include: prior attainment of pupils, levels of disadvantage, cohort size and stability, and the proportions of pupils with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and English as an additional language

But in a published earlier this month, the DfE said that, while it considered including protected characteristics such as ethnicity, this was ultimately excluded.

The DfE argued that ethnicity did not add substantially to the model. Gender and school type will also not be included in the model.

The risk of poorly matched schools

Concerns have been raised about the decision to exclude the ethnicity of pupils.

In research conducted at the University of Bristol, academics explored contextualising the Progress 8 performance measure. In that work, they found that ethnicity was the second most important contextualising factor after free school meal eligibility.

George Leckie, professor of social statistics at the university and part of the research, argued that ethnicity should be included in the DfE model.

“I was surprised that ethnicity is ignored in this new measure,” he said.

This will create situations where schools find that few of the 50 schools they have been matched to have the same context, Professor Leckie warned.

“I worry that schools will often feel that few of the schools they are matched to actually look like them. A school’s identity is much more than its values on the 10 variables used for matching,” he said.

The DfE’s decision also comes amid a renewed policy focus on the achievement of white working-class pupils.

Former education secretary Bridget Phillipson promised a “generational reset” for this group, while exclusive 91���� analysis this year revealed that white working-class girls achieve the lowest at GCSE.

‘Odd’ to omit ethnicity data

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the similar-schools model but called the omission of ethnicity “odd”.

“On paper, the model itself seems pretty sensible, but it is odd that it includes only English as an additional language rather than wider ethnicity data, which would seem to be an important factor in schools working together to support the challenges facing their cohorts,” he said.

Mr Di’Iasio also raised concern about Ofsted using the similar-schools data in its inspections.

He warned: “It isn’t really clear to us exactly how similar-schools comparisons will be used in evaluating schools and whether it will address one of the main problems with the new [inspection] framework in that it tends to penalise schools serving disadvantaged communities.”

Adrian Gray, a former Ofsted inspector, has criticised the decision to include English as an additional language (EAL) over ethnicity.

”[EAL] can hide all manner of variations, so it is interesting that there is no reference to ethnicity or to the issue of white working-class,” Mr Gray wrote on LinkedIn.

“The decision not to include ethnicity looks political. We know that it matters - look at groups like Travellers and actually White British.”

The DfE has been approached for comment.