Pupils climbing over disadvantage hurdle

Nov 19 2009 by Tony Collins, Birmingham Post

Has Birmingham managed to address under-achievement in its schools? Education Correspondent Tony Collins looks at the latest results for the city.

There is a “steady, quiet revolution” taking place in the city’s schools, according to education chief Tony Howell.

Despite coping with children from some of the most deprived areas in the country and dealing with a steady increase in pupils whose first language isn’t English, it appears Birmingham has done rather well in raising its game in the education stakes.

A new report into educational achievement in Birmingham suggests that disadvantage is not proving a barrier to success among the city’s early years children, aged four and five.

Birmingham’s 16-year-olds are also continuing to strive forward in their GCSE results, even outperforming the national average.

Although there is some concern for those pupils in the middle.

The comprehensive document, published this week by Birmingham City Council, examines the full range of Birmingham’s examination and assessment results for 2009.

Tony Howell, Birmingham’s strategic director for children, young people and families, said there had been a “steady, quiet revolution” with educational attainment in the city.

He added: “Behind the scenes many dedicated people have been working extremely hard and we are riding on the crest of their commitment to raising standards.

“Teachers increasingly see us as a good place to work.”

Much of the focus in this document is on the significant improvement in GCSE performance, with the proportion of Birmingham pupils achieving at least five A*-C passes having now reached 72.4 per cent, compared with 66.4 per cent last year, and a rise of 34 per cent over the past decade.

This puts Birmingham’s performance well above the provisional average for England of 70 per cent, and also ahead of other places such as Coventry, Leeds, Nottingham, Walsall and Manchester.

Birmingham also improves when the five or more GCSE passes include English and mathematics, from 45.4 per cent to 47.5 per cent, although this is below the national average of 49.7 per cent.

This improvement, which is also made up of around a third of non-GCSE qualifications such as the vocational courses, means that the number of secondary schools at risk of Government intervention has halved from 20 last year to ten now.

The Government’s all-important National Challenge “floor target” sets the expected standard at 30 per cent of pupils achieving at least five A*-Cs including English and maths.

The news is less cheerful at Key Stage 2 which tests the performance of 11-year-olds.

While the proportion of the city’s pupils achieving the expected level 4 or above has remained constant at 75 per cent in mathematics, there has been a one per cent drop for English, to 76 per cent, and for science, to 85 per cent.

Nationally, the drop in English is repeated but maths results have increased by one per cent while science has remained unchanged.

And, when the English and maths results are combined, Birmingham has seen its performance drop by one percentage point on last year to 68 per cent against a target of 74 per cent.

This has had the effect of increasing the number of Birmingham schools below the Government’s floor target of at least 55 per cent level 4 and above in English and maths, from 48 in 2008 to a provisional 58 now.

But there is greater cause for optimism among the city’s younger age groups.

For seven year-olds at Key Stage 1, the percentage of pupils achieving level 2 or above in both reading and writing has increased by two percentage points to 80 per cent and 76 per cent respectively. This is despite no change nationally for reading and just a one per cent increase in writing.

However, the Early Years picture, looking at how children fare in reception, would appear to be even healthier.

The city has achieved seven of the 11 targets which it laid out in its Early Years Foundation Stage Profile for 2009, and even exceeded two targets which it set for 2010. The areas of learning are based around personal, social and emotional development and communication, language and literacy.

This is against the background of considerable disadvantage.

Within the early years cohort, 77 per cent of Birmingham children live in areas that are among the 30 per cent most deprived in the country, while 43 per cent of children in both early years and Key Stage 1 have English as an additional language – three times the national average.

Equally, 26 per cent of children were on the special educational needs code of practice.

As the report said: “This is an encouraging outcome given the increasing proportion of young children in the city who do not have English as their first language and the high proportion of children who live in areas of socio/economic deprivation.”