SUMMARY
In this, the second report of our inquiry into Secondary Education, we consider pupil achievement. We recognise that the Government has had considerable success in raising levels of literacy and numeracy in primary schools and is seeking to build on this in secondary education. But the evidence we have heard indicates that its approach here lacks the clear focus found in the primary phase.
It may be that as the differences between children become more apparent a greater variety of initiatives is needed, but we were left unclear as to the essential purposes and impact of some of the main Government strategies. In particular, Education Action Zones, introduced in 1998, are being merged into Excellence in Cities, yet we have not seen any detailed evaluation of EAZs. We applaud the Government's adoption of an evidence-based approach to policy formation, but we are concerned that it does not seem to have taken the opportunity to learn fully the lessons arising from this initiative. This mirrors concerns we expressed in our previous report on diversity of school provision about the evidence informing the decision to expand the specialist schools programme.
The Government has made extensive use of centrally-set targets as a means of setting clear expectations for schools. This approach has met with some success and has contributed in our view to the rising levels of achievement in both primary and secondary schools, but we consider it has now served its purpose. We are not convinced that requiring teachers to achieve nationally predetermined targets in still the best way forward. In particular, we believe that a distinction one of our witnesses drew between 'low achievement' and 'under-achievement' is crucial. This suggests that much more individual assessment of children's potential is necessary, and schools and teachers are in the best position to undertake this. We recommend that the Government should move from a system of national targets to allowing schools set their own targets, subject to review by local authorities and Ofsted, based on individual progress plans for their pupils. The aim should be for every child to achieve as much as they possibly can.
A particular drive in Government policy has been to raise the achievement of minority ethnic pupils. We noted the range in performance. The results of pupils from Chinese and Indian backgrounds tend to be above the overall average, while those of African Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils tend to be below. The evidence presented to us indicated the complexity of the reasons. Differences in performance by pupils from different ethnic backgrounds is a sensitive topic but we suggest that if real improvements are to be made the issues must be thoroughly researched. We took less evidence on differences with gender but again we were struck by how little solid information as to the reasons there seems to be in comparison with the extensive media speculation.
One thing that is clear from the evidence presented to us is that poverty is a significant indicator of low educational achievement. Some of the Department's initiatives address the issue directly, but tackling this problem effectively will require co-ordination across Government as a whole.
The role of teachers is crucial. We were concerned to learn from our witnesses and the Annual Report of HMCI for 2001-02 of the difficulties some of the schools with most to do in raising achievement are finding in attracting good teachers. We shall be examining teacher recruitment and retention in detail in our next report, but we recommend at this stage that the government should give greater attention to strategies to encourage the best teachers to work in the most challenging schools. Effective leadership in schools is also vital. The evidence we received in this inquiry showed that schools which are well managed and have proactive leadership are much better placed than others to enable all children, even those most at risk of failing, to succeed.
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