Ofsted today published its state of the nation annual report. Geographic inequalities in attainment featured prominently: “There are 16 local authority areas in England where less than 60% of the children attend good or outstanding secondary schools, have lower than national GCSE attainment and make less than national levels of expected progress. All but three [...]
The decision to allow a new grammar school to open in Kent drew a lot of media attention recently. With the exception of grammar schools, state schools in England are required to admit children irrespective of their ability. A number of developed countries do have school systems, however, which select children into different-ability schools at [...]
The TES reported that Pupil Premium funding for higher attaining disadvantaged pupils may be redistributed in order to give extra support to lower attaining pupils. While such a move might be in the spirit of the Pupil Premium to reduce attainment gaps, data suggests that higher attaining disadvantaged pupils still need additional support to keep [...]
The arguments for and against grammar schools are well rehearsed. Grammar schools provide a good education for those who get to attend - I think the best guess in the literature is that they experience gains in the order of 1 grade in 4 of their best 8 GCSE exams. This isn’t a huge impact, [...]
I recently watched the recent BBC series 'Are Our Kids Tough Enough: Chinese School' which followed the experiences of five maths teachers from China as they started teaching in a school in Southampton. I anticipated that I might learn something that might explain the very high levels of attainment of students from China in international [...]
Every year there are high achievers at primary school, pupils scoring in the top 10% nationally in their Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests, yet who five years later receive a set of GCSE results that place them outside the top 25% of pupils. There are about 7,000 such pupils each year, 15% of all those [...]
A blog I wrote last week, on the “UKIP voters of tomorrow”, was very popular. In it, I explored the relationship between UKIP vote share in the 2015 General Election and constituency average GCSE performance between 2011 and 2014. There seemed to be a negative relationship between the two measures – constituencies with higher UKIP [...]
Today the Sutton Trust has published Missing Talent, a research brief we wrote on the 7,000 pupils who score in the top 10% nationally in their KS2 tests, yet who five years later receive a set of GCSE results that places them outside the top 25%. The findings show that boys, particularly those from disadvantaged [...]
When MPs quote education statistics, I’m always curious where they got them from and whether they are accurate. Last week, Labour leadership contender Liz Kendall made a speech in Leicester where she mentioned that in Leicester West, ‘children start school on average 15 months behind where they should be in terms of their development’. We [...]
