ALL that fresh air is working wonders for rural children — who comfortably outperform their city-dwelling peers.
A fifth more rural pupils achieved five good GCSEs last year, according to figures from the Department for Education and Skills. The DfES figures reveal that 61 per cent of children in rural schools attained at least five A* to C grades compared with 53.7 per cent in non-rural schools. The gap between urban and rural education is widest at small to medium sized schools.
Lack of school choice is sometimes seen as the downside of rural life, but it ensures that schools are truly mixed in terms of socio-economic background.
“The whole spectrum of abilities will be there,” Professor Alan Smithers, from the University of Buckingham, says in The Times Educational Supplement (Sept 8). “Because it is an inclusive environment, I think most schools get the best out of the great majority of pupils,” he adds.
The findings come despite research from the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) that indicates that 20 per cent of people in the countryside live in poverty. The CRC also found that 78 per cent say that it is difficult to find decent affordable housing.
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Choice in urban areas can exacerbate problems, Professor Smithers says, leading to some schools becoming “quite depressing places in which underperformance is rife”.
This variation in schools is highlighted in a report by the National Foundation for Educational Research which looked at the profile of pupils in schools compared with that of pupils in the local communities. One key finding was that pupils from black and ethnic minority groups travel outside their local communities more than do white pupils.
www.nfer.ac.uk