Native English speakers flop at GCSE

Children with English as their second language outperform native speakers for the first time

Pupils who speak English as a second language are now outperforming native speakers at GCSES, official figures show. Data released by the Department for Education shows that children who grow up speaking another language have a higher attainment score by the time they are 16. The figures also showed that rising numbers of secondary schools are considered under-performing. One in eight of England’s mainstream secondaries – 365 in total – fell below the Government’s minimum standards.

PUPILS who speak English as a second language are now outperforming native speakers at GCSES, official figures show.

Data released by the Department for Education (DFE) shows that children who grow up speaking another language have a higher attainment score by the time they are 16.

The figures also showed that rising numbers of secondary schools are considered under-performing, meaning they fall below the “floor standard”.

One in eight of England’s mainstream secondaries – 365 in total – fell below the government’s minimum standards in 2017. This is up from 282 schools, just under one in 10, the year before.

The DFE suggested that the rise in under-performing schools is because of technical changes to the points system used by government statisticians to calculate a school’s performance.

Prof Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said that some of the children who speak English as a second language are often given more encouragement by their families with their school work.

“Immigrants who come here often have very little and they see education as the key to improving their children’s lives,” he said. “So the children are encouraged to work hard and they get every support at home. Also upping sticks to come here means the families have something about them – a bit of get up and go if you like.”

He said that by comparison, families who have lived in the UK for some time can “take education for granted” and see school as “a bit of a chore”.

In previous years, schools have been ranked according to the proportion of pupils achieving at least five grade A* to Cs at GCSE, including English and maths. This measure was scrapped last year in favour of Attainment 8, with a points score based on eight GCSE subjects, with a double weighting given to English and maths.

This year, the average Attainment 8 score of children who speak English as a second language was 46.8, compared to 46.3 for native speakers.

The previous year native speakers were narrowly ahead, with an average score of 50.0 compared to 49.9 for nonnative speakers.

Last year was also the first time that schools were measured for progress as well as attainment. Progress 8 measures the progress of each pupil from the end of primary school up to GCSES.

It compares pupils’ results with the achievements of other pupils that have the same prior attainment and measures performance across eight “core” qualifications.

Both this year and last, children with English as a second language made better progress on average than native speakers, although this year the gap widened between the two.

Sir Kevan Collins, the chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, a charity run by the Sutton Trust, said that the “excellent progress” of children who speak English as second language should be welcomed.

However, he noted that this group “covers a broad spectrum of language needs” and includes children from a mixture of socio-economic backgrounds. “It can include a bilingually fluent child who has grown up here alongside a refugee who may not speak any English at all,” he said.

The data, which covers every secondary in England, shows that London has the lowest proportion of underperforming schools while the North -East had the highest.