More secondaries underperforming

EDUCATION: More than a quarter of a million children are being taught at underperforming secondary schools. One in eight in England fell below the Government’s minimum standards in 2017.

MORE THAN a quarter of a million children are being taught at underperforming secondary schools, official figures show.

One in eight of England’s mainstream secondaries – 365 in total – fell below the Government’s minimum standards in 2017, according to new statistics. This is up from 282 schools – just under one in ten – the year before.

According to analysis of the data, it means 260,783 schoolchildren are now being taught at underperforming secondaries – about 8.6 per cent, compared to 206,991 – 6.8 per cent – in 2016.

In Yorkshire, 22 schools fell below the floor target, which equates to 7.6 per cent of secondaries in the region. This is down from last year’s eight per cent.

The highest proportion of underperforming schools were in Doncaster with three schools – 18.8 per cent of its total. However, there were none in Barnsley, Rotherham or York.

Damian Allen, director of people at Doncaster Council, said its scores have fallen less than those at a national and regional level.

He said: “As a council we are committed to improving outcomes for all our children and these results, although not where we want them to be, reflect an improving picture.”

Schools fall below the Government’s performance threshold if pupils fail to make enough progress across eight subjects, with particular weight given to English and maths.

The Department for Education (DfE) said the rise in underperforming schools comes because of technical changes to the points system used by government statisticians to calculate a school’s performance.

The national rise comes amid major changes to England’s exams system, including the introduction of a new grading system, which has meant the data includes English and maths GCSE results awarded new 9-1 grades while other subjects received traditional A*-G grades.

School leaders said the new grading system affecting English and maths has complicated the way school performance is calculated, as it has to be worked out using a combination of old and new grading systems.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “As the DfE itself says, these changes are the main reason why there has been an increase in the number of schools which are deemed to be below the ‘floor standard’ for Progress 8.

“It is extremely unfair that more schools find themselves in this situation because of complex changes to the way in which this is calculated.”

Schools are judged against a measure called Progress 8 which looks at the progress a pupil has made between the end of primary and the end of secondary school, and their results across eight GCSEs compared to the achievement of other youngsters with similar abilities. A secondary is considered to be below the Government’s floor standard if, on average, pupils score half a grade less (-0.5) across eight GCSEs than they would have been expected to compared to pupils of similar abilities nationally.

The DfE insisted that where schools have fallen below the floor standard, the data is “a starting point for a conversation about school improvement”.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb highlighted a narrowing gulf between the results of rich and poor pupils.