Schools in England struggle to hit ‘moving target’
Darshna Soni
Communities Editor
An updated league table system for England has left more than 200 schools failing to meet tough new standards branded “even more meaningless than usual”, as Darshna Soni discovers.
More than 200 schools in England have failed to meet a tough new Government target which requires a minimum of 35 per cent of 16-year-olds achieving a C grade or higher in five GCSE subjects, including English and maths. These schools, which number 216, now face closure or being taken over.
The figures published earlier also show that just one-in-six 16-year-olds achieved a newly-created measure known as the “English Baccalaureate”. Also brought in last year, this focuses on specific subjects, requiring passes at a C grade or higher in English, maths, science, history or geography and a language.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said: “Children, parents and schools should be proud of their results, which have been achieved through all the hard work they have put in.
“But as the international evidence .. shows us, England still lags behind other nations… That’s why we are reforming our school system by learning from the best-performing countries. In nearly every other developed country in the world, children are assessed in a range of core academic subjects at 15 or 16.”
Success - or failure?
Head teacher Steve Taylor is proud of his school. It was once described as a "failing comprehensive." But today, it's a new, modern academy, popular with local parents in Bristol, writes Channel 4 News Correspondent Darshna Soni.
And it's also the most improved in the country, with more than 80 per cent of its pupils achieving 5 GCSEs, grade A to C. But under new league table measures, that's fallen to just 7 per cent.
Mr Taylor argues that not all of his pupils are suited to the traditional academic subjects that the Education Secretary wants all students to pursue.
He denies the claim that some schools pushed students towards "soft" subjects under the old targets, where vocational subjects like "personal effectiveness" counted instead of a GCSE.
"Are traditional subjects, which don't suit everyone, really the only measure of intelligence?" he asks.
Half of his pupils don't speak English as their first language and this means they can find subjects like history or science difficult to understand. I met a group of bright, ambitious students taking an Arabic lesson. They came from Somalia and some spoke three different languages.
"But I find geography hard, because I don't understand the maps," one told me. She's hoping to take it next year. And yet this year, her Arabic qualification won't count towards the Baccalaureate, because it isn't a modern European or classics language. Is this fair?
It's not just at the academy that has come bottom of the class. Across town is the prestigious Clifton College. Fees here begin at around £6,000. And yet fewer than one per cent of its pupils gained the English Bac, because of a technicality. Many private schools dropped some GCSEs in favour of the international GCSEs, considered more difficult, yet not included in the new measure.
However, teaching unions have described the latest tables as “meaningless”.
Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “In no way will they show how well schools perform. In fact, it is quite irresponsible to publish the league tables at all since the Government has moved the goalposts after the exams, to which they relate, were sat.”
Chris Keates, from the NASUWT teaching union, said: “The coalition Government is pursuing a relentlessly elitist approach to education, condemning schools to live or die by the narrow range of subjects identified in the English baccalaureate.
School leaders have complained that they are being asked to hit a moving target. Late last year the government raised the definition of the minimum standard of achievement to 35 per cent of students gaining five GCSEs at grade C to A* including maths and English.
Previously, just 30 per cent of pupils had been required to achieve the minimum standards, and by that measure 82 schools rather than 216 would have been judged as ‘underperforming’. Last year about 300 schools failed to meet the minimum.
Also newly published is comparative data on the financial management of English schools. In relation to school spending, the Department for Education says on its website: “We want to encourage parents and the wider public to look at the data and compare the spending and performance of local schools in their area.”