‘One in eight secondary schools is sub-standard’

ONE in eight secondary schools in England is under-performing, official figures show.

Some 365 fell below the minimum standards in 2017 – up from 282 schools the year before.

It means 260,783 pupils are in under-performing secondaries in England.

The Department for Education blamed a new grading system used to measure performance.

It looks at a pupil’s progress after primary and the end of secondary school, plus exam results.

Under-performing is when children score half a grade less across eight GCSEs than would have been expected to compared with pupils of similar abilities nationally.

Geoff Barton of the Association of School and College Leaders said: “It is extremely unfair more schools find themselves in this situation because of complex changes to the way in which this is calculated.”

Average attainment 8 score per pupil was 45.9 for white British children, a drop on last year’s 49.8, a worse performance than students whose first language is not English, who scored 46.8.

Chinese pupils topped the table, with an average score of 62.6, while Indian students came second on 55.4.

BILLIONS have been spent on new school buildings but a damning statistic shows that one secondary school in eight is still falling below the minimum educational standard.

To put that in stark context it means 260,783 children are being taught in an under-performing secondary school.

Eager to deflect attention from the stunning under-achievement laid bare by these figures, the Department for Education blames “technical changes” to the points system that is being used by government statisticians.

So why is it the results show that children from Chinese and Indian families outperform by far their white British classmates?

Another statistical quirk… or possibly an indicator that some parents may take education more seriously than others?