The Department for Children, etc. has just released figures which they claim show a slight improvement in attainment at age 14 in our schools. (It has do be acknowledged that there are actually no Sats test for them, since Balls cancelled them after the marking debacle, so we are relying on teacher (subjective?) evaluation of performance, and the slight improvement may represent a slight optimism on the part of a few teachers.
The results, it must be said, are still very disappointing - 23% of all 14 year-olds did not reach the expected standard in English, or almost a quarter. In science it is 22%, while in maths it is 20%. The claimed changes were an increase in English of 1%, a 2% increase in science while maths was left unchanged.
Girls still out-perform boys in all the three subjects, with gap widest in English at 84% for girls and 79% of boys reaching the standard, and narrowest in maths where the gap was 80% to 79%. In science there was a 3% difference.
If the increase in those achieving the standard is a genuine one, it is to be welcomed, but the overall results in the basic subjects are still very poor.
If a school-leaver lacks sufficient facility in English and Maths, his or her job prospects are not good. Moreover, if they have struggled throughout their school years they have probably not been able to develop competence in other subjects, and their results there will also be weak.
We already have a major unemployment/benefit problem, and these results will clearly not do much to improve this in the future.
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