Literacy gains not reflected in GCSEs

Monday, 27 June 2005 12:00 AM

The performance of school children at GCSE level has failed to improve despite better literacy standards.

The findings by the Institute of Public Policy Research (ippr) suggest the Government's drive to improve literacy standards is failing to have the impact it had hoped.

Figures from the centre-left think tank show there was an 18 per cent increase in literacy scores between 1996 and 2004 among 11-year-olds, The Sunday Times reports.

But when those 11-year-olds came to take their GSCEs at 16, the improvement was much smaller at four per cent - no higher than the expected long-term trend.

The analysis, conducted by ippr senior economist Peter Robinson, was delivered to the Government at a private Whitehall seminar earlier this month.

It is likely to be presented by critics as a failure of the Government's £1 billion national literacy and numeracy strategy.

Conservative Shadow Education Secretary David Cameron said: "The plain truth is Labour have pumped a huge amount of money into education and have not achieved the results we have all wanted to see. If Labour are going to fail to reach their own targets they should at least be frank with people about what has gone wrong and why.

"As with so many things this Government does, they surround these initiatives with a huge blaze of publicity but there is no actual delivery. What is lacking is a commitment to rigorous standards and discipline to ensure improving performance in secondary schools."

A recent report by government education watchdog Ofsted suggested that pupil performance in Maths and English was worsening during the early years of secondary school.

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