Figures published today show that fewer 11 year olds have reached Level 4 in English, the standard expected for their age group. A fifth of 11 year olds did not achieve this level, in the tests taken in May.
The drop in results is the first since Sats tests were introduced in 1995.
From the Daily Mail:
“The depressing figures come despite Labour investing billions over the past decade in literacy and numeracy drives.
This September alone, around four in ten children – almost 220,000 – are expected to move up to secondary school without sufficient mastery of the three Rs.
They will struggle to punctuate basic sentences, spell words with more than one syllable or recall the six times table.
Around 35,000 will be completely unable to read and write.”
From the Guardian:
“The results also show that boys are falling far behind girls in writing, and are also lagging in reading and science. Four out of 10 boys could not write a complete sentence using commas, while three-quarters of girls managed this task.”
Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary, David Laws said:
“Progress in primary schools has clearly stalled and in some cases has even slipped backwards.
“The yawning gap between girls and boys in literacy is very worrying. One in four boys now starts secondary school without being able to read or write at the expected level.
“The Government has failed to get a grip on the basics. Ministers need to cut class sizes and ensure schools receive extra cash so that teachers can give struggling children the extra support they desperately need.”
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A Week in Politics #8
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3 Comments
“Ministers need to cut class sizes and ensure schools receive extra cash so that teachers can give struggling children the extra support they desperately need.”
Where does Mr Laws propose the extra cash to come from? Or the extra teachers to enable class sizes to be cut? Isn’t this just the “spend, spend, spend” politics of which Mr Laws is supposed to be a leading opponent within the party?
it’s because teachers are forced to adhere to curriculum rather than stopping to teach an applicable use to learning. Wish someone offered a class in pure grit. No one hates homework more than the parents.
Yay! More statporn! Why do people look at one data point, compare it to the last data point, and draw conclusions from that. You have to look at the trend! For David to say, “Progress in primary schools has clearly stalled”, is stupid. The trend from two data points will be swamped out by noise. We can’t know if it has stalled or not, unless you look at the general trend, but this post makes clear that it’s the first time the result has gone down since 1995 (so the general trend is pretty much up). It’ll be a couple of years before we can conclude “Progress in primary schools has clearly stalled”.