250,000 pupils languishing in failing schools

MORE than a quarter of a million children are languishing in schools that fail to meet basic targets, official figures show.

Hundreds of state secondaries fell below the Government’s ‘floor standards’ by failing to ensure enough pupils got five good GCSE grades and made sufficient progress.

However, while there are 250,955 pupils in under- performing schools, this represents a reduction of 23,000 since last year.

The improvement comes after Ofsted began a regime of tougher inspections to pinpoint problem areas in schools.

Yesterday’s figures also show only 48 – less than half – of the top 100 schools for A-level results were private. The best performing institutions included 44 selective state schools and six comprehensives.

Commenting on the GCSE figures, based on last summer’s grades, schools minister Nick Gibb said: ‘The results show how far we have come in raising standards, but they also highlight where some pupils are still at risk of falling behind. We will tackle those pockets of persistent under-performance.’

Pupils attending under-performing schools make up around 7 per cent of the total secondary population. Overall, 329 state secondary schools in England did not meet the minimum benchmarks. Of these, 312 failed to ensure that at least 40 per cent of their pupils got at least five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths.

The other 17 schools were among 327 that opted in to a new ‘Progress 8’ performance measure, which looks at the progress of pupils across eight subjects, and fell below a certain threshold for this target.

Five areas have at least ten under- performing schools – Kent, Birmingham, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. Blackpool had the highest proportion of pupils at an underperforming school, with 48.6 per cent of youngsters not getting a decent education. At the other end of the scale, there were 41 areas with no failing schools. The top school for GCSE results was the Blue Coat School, an academy in Liverpool, where all 124 students gained at least five C grades.

The A-level results, which are similar to last year’s, suggest many top state schools now outperform fee-paying schools.

The best performing was Colyton Grammar School, followed by three other grammars and then the independent King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham in fifth place.

However, private school head teachers say government data show only part of the picture as some pupils at state schools take ‘softer’ subjects that boost average points.