Schools failing poorest pupils face crackdown

Teams of inspectors will be sent back into schools that are not doing well by disadvantaged youngsters, and these schools could be stripped of their top ranking, Sir Michael Wilshaw said yesterday.

He also suggested incentives could be offered to get people to sign up to become a National Service Teacher, such as bigger pay packets, higher status and faster career progression.

Sir Michael said this would help to ensure a proportion of England’s most talented teachers worked in “less fashionable, more remote or challenging places”.

And he urged the Government to review assessment for young children, and consider publishing details of the progress pupils make between starting school and age seven.

The current timing of national assessments, at the end of the reception year, is “too late” because youngsters may have “lost a vital year of learning by then”, he warned.

Sir Michael launched a stinging attack on schools in affluent areas of England, particularly in the East and South East, where he said poorer pupils faced a culture of low expectations and were left languishing “unseen”.

“Many of the invisible children inhabit the classrooms and corridors of the legions of coasting – or sometimes sinking – schools that populate the provinces and hug the coasts of England,” Sir Michael warned.

“Disadvantaged children are usually in a small minority in these schools. They keep most of their parents happy with broadly acceptable results and purport to do their best for the rest.

“In the past, many of these coasting schools flew under Ofsted’s radar. They were not seriously challenged by the ‘satisfactory’ or ‘good’ judgments they routinely received when inspected.”

Ofsted produced tables yesterday which showed how well pupils from deprived backgrounds perform at both primary and secondary schools at education authorities across the country.

This showed pupils on free school meals in Yorkshire fared worst than in most other regions in the country in tests sat at 11-years-old and their GCSEs at 16. Less than a third of pupils from deprived homes in the region (31.3 per cent) achieved five good grades including English and maths.

Only two regions in England saw worst results among deprived pupils in South West and South East England.

Barnsley had the region’s lowest GCSE success rates with 22 per cent of pupils from deprived backgrounds achieving the benchmark.

At primary level Yorkshire was also third worst with 61 per cent of children getting level four results – the standard expected of the age group – in English and maths. Only two other regions had worse results: the South East and the East of England.

North East Lincolnshire had the region’s lowest results with 54 per cent of poor pupils achieving level four results in the two core subjects followed by York and Rotherham where it was 56 per cent.

The worst place to be a child from a poor family in terms of education was not a major city, but West Berkshire, Sir Michael suggested yesterday.

“Disadvantaged children in this lovely, affluent part of south east England last year had the worst
 attainment in the whole country at primary school, the second worst at secondary school, and were in one of the bottom three local authorities for qualifications at 19.

“West Berkshire is an example of a much wider problem affecting the relatively prosperous counties of south-east England.

“On the surface, the overall outcomes for these areas may look good but, for children eligible for free school meals, they hide deep and shocking failure.”

Sir Michael said that in future Ofsted would be “tougher with schools which are letting down their poor children”.