Stark link between poverty and failure in school is highlighted by Ofsted chief

from The Times Online

Alexandra Frean, Education Editor

More than 200,000 young people aged 16 to 18 have virtually no hope of getting a foot in the door to the world of work after leaving school with no qualifications, the Chief Inspector of Schools said yesterday.

Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted, said the fate of these young people, known as Neets (not in education, employment or training), highlighted the enormous challenge facing society in closing the gap in educational attainment between rich and poor.

Publishing her annual report yesterday, Ms Gilbert said the barren prospect facing these young people, who represent more than ten per cent of all 16 to 18-year-olds, was “alarming and unacceptable”.

Her predictions for their immediate future were even more gloomy. It was hard, she said, “to find encouragement from inspection evidence” that things would get better for young people on the cusp of adult life.

In a bold attempt to widen the public debate about educational standards beyond the school gate, Ms Gilbert focused her attention on the “stark” relationship between poverty and educational achievement.

“It cannot be right that people from the most disadvantaged groups are least likely to achieve well and to participate in higher levels of education and training,” she said.

Overall, Ofsted reported that just 51 per cent of secondary schools were judged to be good or outstanding, up from 49 per cent last year. Ten per cent of secondaries were classed as inadequate, down from 13 per cent.

In primary schools, the proportion of good and outstanding schools rose from 58 to 61 per cent.

Ms Gilbert said that a large proportion of failing schools were in the most deprived areas and that poorer children still had the “odds stacked against them” in education.

The road to recovery would be a long one with “no quick fixes”, she added.

On the gap between rich and poor, the figures show that only 12 per cent of 16-year-olds in care and just 33 per cent of pupils entitled to free school meals (FSM, the proxy measure for poverty) gained five or more good GCSEs last year, compared with 61 per cent of nonFSM children and a national average of 56 per cent.

Among primary pupils, 61 per cent of FSM children achieved the expected level in English, compared with 83 per cent of nonFSM pupils. For maths the figures were 58 and 79 per cent respectively.

Ms Gilbert said that failures in leadership and management and poor practice in the classroom were the primary causes of school failure. But she was critical, too, of the lack of aspiration often displayed by teachers when it came to vocational education.

Students often seemed far more enthusiastic about such opportunities than their teachers, she said, blaming this divide on a misguided tendency among teachers to associate vocational teaching with the least able students. Ms Gilbert added that she hoped that Ofsted, having taken over the inspection of children’s services and adult education in the last year, would now have greater leverage across a wide range of services to effect change.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, hoped that Ms Gilbert’s comments on the “poverty gap” would act as a rallying cry to those working with young people.

“No child should be held back because of poverty and disadvantage, or deterred from going to the best school because of where they live or their family background, their ethnicity or their disability,” he said.

But teachers’ leaders said it was “totally unrealistic” to think that schools could tackle socio-economic disadvantage on their own.

Martin Johnson, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “Schools cannot compensate for a child’s family background - financial or aspirational poverty – or a local culture of unemployment.”

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that it would not be easy in a society as divided and diverse as England for schools to overcome social inequality on their own. “It requires action from central and local government in areas much wider than education to make this task feasible,” he said.

The report also highlighted concerns over behaviour, which was “just satisfactory” in 29 per cent of secondary schools, and about the failure of schools to give children a clear understanding of “what it means to be British”.

The good and bad

Outstanding

Childcare 3 per cent
Primary schools 13 per cent
Secondary schools 13 per cent
Colleges 17 per cent

Good

Childcare 55 per cent
Primary schools 48 per cent
Secondary schools 38 per cent
Colleges 44 per cent

Inadequate

Childcare 4 per cent
Primary schools 5 per cent
Secondary schools 10 per cent
Colleges 3 per cent

Source: Ofsted