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Education: Assessments

Volume 460: debated on Monday 21 May 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what methods his Department uses for the monitoring of educational attainment; and what assessment he has made of trends in levels of educational attainment in the north east of England. (135651)

The Department makes use of various methods for monitoring educational performance. Ofsted inspections, national curriculum tests and public examinations provide a framework for national and local analysis of performance against critical learning milestones. They provide measures which allow us to track changes in performance over time nationally, locally and at school level, to compare the progress of children in different schools, and to compare the performance of different groups of pupils. At local level, the National Strategies and Government Offices provide ongoing monitoring and challenge of the performance of local authorities and schools as a basis for supporting them to improve.

All these methods have contributed to the improvement in standards that we have seen over the last nine years.

Since 1997, standards in education achievement from early years to post 16 in (a) Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend constituency and (b) North East region have improved broadly in line with national levels of attainment. A summary of the 1997 outcomes (where available) compared to 2006 is set out in the following table.

Newcastle upon Tyne East WallsendNorth East RegionNational

1997

1998

2006

1997

1998

2006

1997

1998

2006

KS1 level 2+

Reading

77

80

80

85

80

84

Writing

80

77

81

82

81

81

Mathematics

84

86

85

90

84

90

KS2 level 4+

English

51

76

60

78

63

79

Mathematics

51

74

61

77

62

76

KS3 level 5+

English

50

62

53

70

57

73

Mathematics

51

67

55

76

60

77

KS4 GCSE+equiv

Percentage of 15-year-olds achieving 5+ A*-C grades

35.5

55

36.8

57.3

45.1

58.5

Notes:

1. Includes attempts and achievements by these pupils in previous academic years.

2. Key Stage 1—Figures for 2006 are based on provisional data, 1998 is based on final data.

3. Key Stages 2, 3 and 4—Figures for 2006 are based on revised data, 1997 is based on final data.

In 2004 we moved to using administrative data to measure level 2 attainment by age 19 (Level 2 is equivalent to five GCSEs at A*-C), so we cannot compare latest figures with 1997. The latest figures for the North East show 69.2 per cent. of people aged 19 in 2006 were qualified to at least level 2 compared to 64.4 per cent. of people aged 19 in 2004 (corresponding figures for England were 71.4 per cent. of people aged 19 in 2006 and 66.3 per cent. of people aged 19 in 2004).