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Education News

Struggling pupils don't catch up

Just one in 15 (6.5%) pupils starting secondary school in England "behind" for their age goes on to get five good GCSE's including English and maths, official data shows.

The government data published as part of secondary school league tables suggests the majority of schools are failing struggling pupils.

Nationally 58.2% of pupils reach the five good GCSEs benchmark.

Minister Nick Gibb said schools which let pupils down would be tackled.

The Department for Education data covers England's more than 5,000 secondary schools with more than 200 pieces of information being published for each one - almost four times as much as last year.

Much of the information is broken down by pupil type, with scores offered for low, medium and high-attaining pupils, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as non-disadvantaged.

As expected, those from disadvantaged backgrounds (classed as those on free school meals or in local authority care) do less well.

Only a third (34%) of these children achieve the government's benchmark of five GCSE's - or equivalent qualifications - graded A* to C, including English and maths.

In 909 schools, not one low-attaining pupil (those who did not reach Level 4 at the end of primary school) reached this threshold.

Gordon Brown calls for global fund

Gordon Brown is making an impassioned call for the international community to make education a higher priority - and to make a co-ordinated plan to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

The former UK prime minister wants to create a "global fund for education" to raise the £13bn per year needed to bring lessons to the poorest children.

There are 68 million children in the world missing out on primary education.

There is a "hidden and silent emergency in education," warns Mr Brown.

The global target of providing access to a primary school education for all children by 2015 was one of the millennium development goals set out by the United Nations and world leaders at the beginning of the century.

But as that date approaches, Mr Brown says the target is set to be missed, with progress slowing rather than accelerating.

Teachers strike over academy plan

Teachers at a primary school in Birmingham have gone on strike for a second time over plans to turn it into an academy.

Governors at Montgomery Primary School, in Sparkbrook, have backed proposals to remove it from local authority control and seek an external sponsor.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said academy status would improve standards at some of the poorest schools.

Teachers at the school also took industrial action in December.

Some parents at the school said they had not been consulted properly. Mohammed Ashraf, who has a 10-year-old daughter at the school, said it was "unnecessary and unjust to remove all choice" and to "impose" academy status on the school.