Tackling educational inequality - CentreForum

Tackling educational inequality
:
1. The ‘intractable tail’
The majority of children in this country develop the skills and qualifications
that they will need in adult life. But there remains a stubbornly long
‘tail’ of children who leave school without those skills. While the education
reforms of the past ten years have led to some overall improvement,
they have been least effective in improving attainment for the bottom
quartile of pupils.
Part 1 of this paper examines the extent and nature of educational under
attainment, both by pupils and by schools. The analysis is based on
publicly available data and has taken as its starting point the existing
framework of standards and targets, as set out in table 1. While this
allows certain conclusions to be drawn about the extent of under attainment,
there are legitimate questions about the appropriateness of the
standards and target setting framework itself. This issue is returned to
in part 4.
Table 1: Summary of current standards and ’floor
targets’ for school attainment
Key Stage 1
(age 7)
Key Stage 2
(age 11)
Key Stage 3
(age 14)
Key Stage 4
(age 16)
Expected Floor Target
Deadline
Standard
Level 2 n/a -
Level 4 85 per cent of 11 year olds achieve at least level 4
in English and maths
Proportion of schools in which fewer than 65 per
cent of pupils achieve at least level 4 reduced by
40 per cent
Level 5 85 per cent of 14 year olds achieve at least level 5 in
English, maths and ICT; and 80 per cent in science
50 per cent of pupils in all schools achieve at least
level 5 in English, maths and science
Five or
more
A* to C
graded
GCSEs
60 per cent of 16 year olds achieve equivalent of
five good GCSEs
25 per cent of pupils in all schools achieve five good
GCSEs, (rising to 30 per cent by 2008)
2006
2008
2007
2008
2008
2006
Source: Current targets from DfES Publlic Service Agreements in the HM Treasury 2004
Spending Review