Schools do better despite fiasco over
grading

Provisional results released by the Department for Education yesterday reveal 56.8 per cent of the region’s pupils scored at least five A* to Cs in subjects including English and maths, up from 54.6 per cent last year.

While attainment is still below the national average, the gap has more than halved after the proportion of teenagers across England achieving the same benchmark dropped to 58.6 per cent from 59 per cent in 2011.

Campaign for Real Education secretary Nick Seaton, from York, said it was a significant achievement for the region given the tighter grade boundaries this year.

“Yorkshire teachers and pupils are to be congratulated for going against the trend and getting the results regardless of political interference,” he said.

Results went up in all the region’s local authorities except York, where they remained steady at 61.1 per cent. The biggest improvements were in Sheffield and Bradford, where attainment rose by 5.8 and 4.5 per cent.

Statisticians said the national drop – the first in the exam’s 24-year history – resulted from fewer English entries from private schools, but concerns have been raised that tougher grading of this summer’s English paper may also have had an impact.

More than 45,000 pupils are to resit the exam next month.

Visiting schools in Leeds yesterday, Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg said it was “disgraceful” his Tory counterpart Michael Gove had “left so many young people on the scrapheap”.

“How can he explain to parents why their child who took an English exam in June, who performed just as well as a child who took their exam in January, ended up with a D grade rather than a C?

“Labour is demanding a full independent inquiry to get to the bottom of this mess, and for children to have their papers fairly re-graded.”

Leeds played a key role in a campaign to get English GCSEs re-marked. A national alliance of councils, including eight from Yorkshire, schools, pupils, and teaching unions are calling for a judicial review to get exams marked in line with the January boundaries.