Wednesday 13 January 2010

Labour's real educational achievement

The begrudgers in the commentariat have decided that Labour has failed the educational test. For them, there is no figure or fact that could dampen their prejudice. Yet, for more open-minded observers there is one spectacular success - the use of floor targets or minimum acceptable standards to drive up the performance of the weakest schools.

The approach was started by David Blunkett in 2000, and was revived by Ed Balls with his National Challenge. The success of the strategy depends upon real reform - with academies and trust schools - and strong leadership in secondary schools. And because the test of success - five good GCSEs including English and Maths achieved by at least 30% of pupils in a school - is a pretty tough one, even Michael Gove at his most churlish should find it hard to gainsay the achievement (though I doubt it will stop him trying).

Today's figures show that where there were 1600 secondary schools - one in two - that failed to reach this benchmark in 1997, there are only 247 today, including a drop from 439 in 2008. Remarkably, London now outperforms other regions. That is a spectacular success that is unmatched in reform programmes in other countries. The danger is that the Tories in their zealous idelological opposition to targets - even where they so clearly work - will take this pressure off schools and they will only realise its damaging impact only after it is too late. For today, though, it is time to recognise this signal achievement by headteachers and schools that has resulted from a Labour policy.

5 comments:

oldandrew said...

Come off it.

The stats in 1997 were measuring something fundamentally different to what they are measuring now.

Back then 5A*-C GCSEs including Maths and English meant exactly that. Now it means English, maths (which has been made a lot easier by tier changes and modular courses) and one or two carefully selected vocational qualifications assessed by coursework (i.e. done by somebody else) which nevertheless are classed as equivalent to several GCSEs.

This is just moving the goalposts.

Conor Ryan said...

Actually, OldAndrew, that is just not true. If you look at today's statistics http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000909/SFR01_2010.pdf at Table 5, you will see that the difference between those getting five good GCSEs (incl EM) and five good GCSEs or equivalents (incl EM) is just 2.5 percentage points. The EM measure is deliberately tougher than the any GCSE measure which was the only one used in 1997.

mhands1984 said...

Undoubtedly impressive achievements, but of course a greater focus on floor targets and the 30% threshold at least presents a perverse incentive for schools to divert resources to a narrow segment of pupils to achieve that target... What cost to those pupils who are comfortably above the threshold, and those significantly below?

And of course 30% achieving means 70% in a school can still miss it and yet share in floor target's success...

Perhaps targets based on improving distributions may help?

Glen Thomas said...

OldAndrew might have a point, since the schools with the most rapid ascents are just those hovering around the lower benchmark figure.

And these schools, the Academies and City Tech Colleges, somehow got their figures rolled into the Comprehensive results, so we don't know what their 'without GCSE equivalents' scores are.

The press release champions these schools specifically, so I wonder how that mistake happened?

oldandrew said...

Actually, OldAndrew, that is just not true. If you look at today's statistics http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000909/SFR01_2010.pdf at Table 5, you will see that the difference between those getting five good GCSEs (incl EM) and five good GCSEs or equivalents (incl EM) is just 2.5 percentage points.

Hang on, that's averaged over all schools. Restrict it to comprehensives and it's 2.8. If my experience is generally representative then this 2.8% is disproportionately distributed into the lowest performing schools and one assumes the "bump" it gives to schools in the vicinity of 30% is going to be quite significant. And that is on top of any dumbing down in individual GCSEs.