IPPR analysis says government’s education policy is not working |
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Published
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Mon, 27 Jun 2005 06:35
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An analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) shows that Tony Blair's £1 billion campaign to raise the literacy standards across the country is failing to produce the desired results.
The report says that though 11-year-olds are putting in a much better performance, they are not producing the same results at the GCSE levels at the age of 16.The report adds that the scores of children at 11 showed an improvement of 18 percentage points between 1996 and 2004.
But when these same children took their GCSE exams, their performance was up by only four percentage points. These findings were presented by IPPR at a private Whitehall seminar earlier this month. These are bound to give the Prime Minister some sleepless nights as he had proudly proclaimed in 1998 that Labour’s mission was to produce a “world class” education system.
IPPR's senior economist Peter Robinson told the delegates at the seminar, “We had that huge surge in attainment by 11-year-olds, yet five years later when they took their GCSEs the rate of improvement trundled along as before.” The Sunday Times quotes David Hopkins, who was the senior adviser to Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, till last month as saying, “New Labour has been quite good at dealing with failing schools. What it hasn’t been good at is dealing with the amount of under-performance and complacency inside the system.”
He adds that 600 secondary schools were under performing. Analysts are bound to point fingers at the government and say that the huge amount that has been pumped into education has been a waste.
A literary consultant who had worked for the government, and requested anonymity delivered a hammer blow. He said, “Shedloads of money was pushed into primary schools and they got results. But the government hasn’t been radical when it comes to secondary schools. They haven’t dared introduce proper performance-related pay for teachers or do anything about the structure of schools.”
However, an IPPR spokesman did stress that the research was incomplete and as yet unpublished. “It would be a mistake to think that there is a simple answer, that none of this has worked,” he said. But a senior official from the Department for Education and Skills said, “It is undeniable that the rate of increase in attainment (by primary schoolchildren) has not been matched by the same rate of increase in attainment in GCSEs.”
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