Our brightest children lag far behind those overseas, claims trust

It reveals that the nation’s teenagers are four times less likely to score the top level in international maths tests than pupils in countries such as Switzerland and Korea, and half as likely to achieve this standard as those in places like Slovenia and the Slovak Republic.

Those pupils in England who are considered to be “high performing” are most likely to attend private or grammar schools, the report says, rather than being state educated.

The Sutton Trust, which commissioned the research, said the findings paint a “deeply troubling picture” and warned that more must be done to help able students.

Researchers at the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University examined the proportions of pupils achieving the highest levels in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tests. The PISA tests (Programme for International Student Assessment) compare the performance of pupils in different countries in subjects such as reading and maths.

The new report found that just 1.7 per cent of England’s 15-year-olds reached the highest level, Level 6, in maths, compared to an OECD average of 3.1 per cent.

In Switzerland and Korea, 7.8 per cent of pupils reached this level.

Overall, England ranked 26th out of 34 OECD countries in terms of the proportion of pupils reaching the top level in maths, behind other nations like Slovenia (3.9 per cent), the Slovak Republic (3.6 per cent) France (3.3 per cent) and the Czech Republic (3.2 per cent), which were among those scoring around the OECD average.

The report adds that globally, the situation looks worse for England.

Singapore, which is not part of the OECD table analysed, saw 15.6 per cent of its students score the top level, while in Hong Kong and Shanghai, which were also not part of the OECD table, 10.8 per cent and 26.6 per cent respectively got the top level.