Growing Gap In Wales-England GCSE Results, Study Claims

Thu, April 27, 2006

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Welsh pupils are falling behind their English counterparts at GCSE level, it was claimed today.

Welsh pupils are falling behind their English counterparts at GCSE level, it was claimed today.

A BBC study said pupils in England were outperforming pupils in Wales, and a 3% gap has appeared in the years since devolution in 1999.

The Welsh assembly says it is an unfair comparison, but in Westminster ministers are likely to see it as validation of their policy of league tables and innovations such as trust schools and academies.

In Wales the assembly has scrapped national curriculum tests (Sats) and league tables, and stuck with comprehensives.

Statistics obtained by the BBC from the assembly and the Department for Education and Skills showed that in 1999 the percentage of 15-year-old pupils achieving at least five A* to C grades or equivalent at GCSE/GNVQ level was 48% in both Wales and England.

By 2001, both countries were still at level pegging with 50%, but by 2002, England's figure had increased to 52%, while Wales remained at 50%. By 2004 the figure was 51% for Wales and 54% for England - a 3% gap, according to the BBC.

The assembly's education minister, Jane Davidson, told BBC Radio 4's The Battle for Influence programme that she had invested more money in schools in poor areas to improve results.

She said: "We are concerned (about Welsh grades plateauing) which is why we have put in place the new programme, Raise, which is targeted at the most disadvantaged young people."

She echoed the suspicions of Welsh teachers that figures for England are being manipulated because of league tables and that a wider range of qualifications are counted.

"School headteachers have suggested that because of the fact we don't have school league tables in Wales, schools, don't, for example, manipulate the kind of qualifications that pupils take. Now as minister I hear that but I am not necessarily seeing evidence of that here," she told the programme.

"Wales had far more children living in poverty than is the case across whole other parts of the UK," she said. However the BBC website pointed out that Wales has the same percentage of children in poverty (28%) as the UK average.

Ms Davidson added: "I don't run my life in a comparison between Wales and England although the English media always want to run our lives on a comparison between Wales and England.

"I don't think education is just about the achievement at GCSE A* to C. I think education is about ensuring that you are able to grow a child from the moment they come into the education system."

David Reynolds, of Plymouth University, said: "I think there is more pressure in England on schools to improve, more top-down pressure and you've of course got parental choice mechanisms operating in English big cities whereas in much of Wales parents have no effective choice."

Gethin Lewis, the National Union of Teachers' Cymru secretary, said: "What we can't do is to compare one country and another country. The union's view is that in England there is a more divisive system being encouraged, the choice agenda, with academies and specialist schools."

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