Sorry, same message as before

Today we are to have the primery school rankings for the SATS tests last summer.

They will show that about 161,500 pupils out of 577,000, or nearly 28%, have failed to reach the standard expected of 11 year-olds in the "three Rs", that is failed to reach level four in both English and Maths. This represents a decline as compared with the previous year of almost one percentage point.

The government's target for 2011 is a failure rate of 22%, so they look very unlikely to achieve this.

Two comments have to be made:

1) The failure is despite the complaint that teachers are spending too much time preparing pupils for the tests., that is giving them the greatest chance of passing.

2) The government is proposing to abolish the tests at age 11, and rely on teacher's evaluation of children's abilities.

I suspect that this will increase the number of children with satisfactory results, for either or both of the above reasons.

We shall then be back in the situation of the 1970s observed by prime minister Callaghan, - satisfactory marks but declining literacy and numeracy.

Whatever happens in the future, this autumn approaching one third of all children beginning secondary education have an inadequate competence in at least one of the main two subjects, Mathematics or English. It doesn't suggest that they will make good progress in secondary education!