More schools have fallen below the floor standard in GCSE results, new government figures show.
Pupils at almost one in eight mainstream secondary schools were deemed not to have made enough progress in last summer’s exam results. The year before fewer than one in ten schools fell into this category.
The data also showed that children for whom English was not their primary language outperformed those who spoke it as their mother tongue in attainment and progress. Schools are judged on the progress of pupils between the end of primary school and GCSEs, compared with similar children nationally.
The statistics, published by the Department for Education, show that 365 schools fell below the floor standard, compared with 282 last year, an increase of 29 per cent.
Officials said that the figures should be treated with caution as the new 9-1 grade GCSEs in English and maths had spread distribution, meaning that more pupils were at the top and the bottom end.
Advertisement
However, the same floor standard was applied both years — that pupils did half a grade worse on average in their eight best GCSEs, with double weighting for English and maths. This measure is called Progress 8.
The figures also showed that fewer schools were categorised as coasting this year, and that the gap between rich and poor pupils had narrowed slightly, by 3.2 per cent in the past year.
London had the lowest proportion of underperforming schools, while the northeast had the highest.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said: “The attainment gap between the most disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed by 10 per cent since 2011, and more disadvantaged pupils are studying the core academic subjects, ensuring they have the knowledge and skills they need to make the most of their lives.”
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the new grading system for English and maths had complicated the way in which school-performance measures are calculated.
Advertisement
“Our message to the DfE, trust boards, governors and inspectors is to avoid leaping to judgement on the basis of these performance tables,” he said. “They only tell us a limited amount about the true quality of a school.”