Hull's 11-year-old pupils bottom of league - despite best-ever results
ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD pupils in Hull are among the worst in the country for key tests in English and maths, despite achieving the city's best-ever results.
Poor literacy among boys as well as stalling maths results are key factors as to why the city is joint bottom of the Key Stage 2 league tables.
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MUST DO BETTER: Eleven-year-old pupils in the city are among the worst in the country for key tests, despite achieving record results.
The results, released by the Department for Education (DfE) ahead of the official league tables, show that, despite pupils in Hull making a 4 percentage point increase on last year – the city's best ever results – the authority has sunk to the foot, alongside Medway, in Kent.
This year, 72 per cent of pupils got the expected level four in both maths and English, the indicator which is now used to measure pupils' progress.
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It is up from 68 per cent last year. Nationally, 79 per cent of pupils gained the benchmark.
Ken Sainty, assistant head of service for school standards and improvement at Hull City Council, said officials were pleased with the gains pupils had made but disappointed to be at the foot of the table after other authorities also made significant improvement.
He said: "Of course we are disappointed, I know the effort that goes on in schools.
"We share the aspirations parents have and we can do better.
"We know we can because we are doing better."
He said the authority was always keen to achieve more.
"It's about continued progress, it does not all come together in one year," he said.
"We are pleased with the gains we made but then you look at what happens nationally – it just shows how difficult it is.
"The positive is, the results are still going up and it is still possible to get better results.
"To shift out of that bottom group is really hard, you have to get really big improvements to make any shift and it is really hard to make faster progress than anyone else."
In English alone, the city's results also rose 4 percentage points from 76 to 80 per cent of pupils getting level four, compared with 85 per cent nationally.
And in maths, results froze at 77 per cent, compared with 84 per cent nationally.
There were 2,500 pupils sitting the tests in May.
Mr Sainty says the authority must now take a closer look at maths.
He said: "We had a big input around reading and English and it has paid dividends.
"What is becoming a bit more of an issue is the maths.
"A few years ago, it was the other way around.
"We will now assess what we need to do in maths to get that up.
"First we will need to look at all the data. If we had been able to get the same sort of improvements in maths this year as in English then the picture would be different.
"That is something we are going to have to unpick with individual schools and individual pupils.
"We need to look at whether there are certain aspects proving to be more difficult than others.
"We will also determine how many got the English at level four, but not the maths and what aspect of maths for that pupil was the problem.
"It is about working with schools and getting right down to that level of detail."
Mr Sainty said the authority would also look to see if it could learn lessons from others.
He said: "We will look at other similar authorities and the results for our statistical neighbours and see if there are any who have made a big improvement and, if so, learn from them."
He also said schools would be working with boys to improve their standards in English after girls totally outperformed them in the subject.
This year, 86 per cent of girls gained the benchmark level compared with just 74 per cent of boys.
Comments
by fltlgw
Sunday, September 23 2012, 9:16PM
“@unified
"I suggest you start thinking a little more" why does it get so nasty on here. people cant respond without being rude, hope they dont have kids cos they are hardly seting a good example.”
by unified
Sunday, September 23 2012, 8:18PM
“David nivea.
It would spread the results around and the average would go up because the higher scoring schools would boost the average
what do you think the east riding scores would be like if they only counted Bridlington schools.
I suggest you start thinking a little more.
Even the East riding accepts the principle that Hull is constained by the tight boundaries”
by Missfoodlove
Saturday, September 22 2012, 5:58PM
“In many schools there are a large percentage of pupils who only speak English as a second language.these pupils should only attend a mainstream school once their literacy skills are at a required level.
It is almost impossible to teach 30 children if 15 of them have only basic English.”
by David_Nivea
Saturday, September 22 2012, 12:06PM
“@KiminHull: "...the city boundary that does not take in the more affluent suburbs...".
What difference does this make?
Are the children of the affluent suburbs more intelligent than those within the city boundary?
If so, why is this?”
by emmarie-c
Saturday, September 22 2012, 10:45AM
“to 'peterpan', people in Hull are obviously not thick, in fact they must be getting smarter as this was a good result, better than previous years! I don't think people should focus on 'keeping up with the jones', focus on the local achievement instead. Many children in Hull continue on to do A levels and degrees, this is not a city of 'thick' people.”
by Peterpan
Friday, September 21 2012, 1:46PM
“Let's face it. It's nothing whatsoever to do with boundaries etc.
People in Hull are thick. Simple as that.”
by adssmm
Friday, September 21 2012, 11:16AM
“Well - what a surprise - another year boys are failing. My son left primary in 2005 with average results - by year 8 of Secondary School and lots of behavioural problems mainly in the classroom - I asked for him to be re-assessed for reading and writing - the results showed that he was well below the expected levels and the School immediately put in a plan to bring him up to the level he should be at. He is now in Year 11 and after recent discussions with his teachers he is on target to attain B and C grades. I do feel his primary school let him down and that his assessment was not a true reflection of his ability at Key Stage 2.
In contrast and in line with this report his sister is miles ahead and is working on Key Stage 3 work while attending the same primary school!”
by molls04
Friday, September 21 2012, 11:12AM
“KiminHull - spot on - hopefully momentum to get the city's articifically tight boundaries that skew every stat going, moved.
Medway in Kent is an area I know well - surprised their stats are not masked though by those of the LEA that is Kent.
The percentage points difference are in the scheme of things very small and considering our 'inner city' boundary these are pretty decent I would suggest.
A fairer comparison would be other 'inner city' authorities - trouble is other than Nottingham and Bristol they don't exist.
Leeds for example not only includes their wealthy suburbs, which Hull doesn't but also extremely wealthy Wetherby in their stats.
Sick to the back teeth of reading and hearing about these issues I must say.”
by KiminHull
Friday, September 21 2012, 10:30AM
“Yet again the city boundary that does not take in the more affluent suburbs takes it's toll. If we were judged like all the other cities, with the travel to work area included in the figures we'd be mid table. Sure there would still be work to do but at the moment they are not comparing like for like and it's wrong to keep knocking the city. If you looked at other cities inner city areas and compared just those figures with Hull I dare say we'd be close to top of the league.”
by Yelrubsol
Friday, September 21 2012, 9:48AM
“The interesting thing about the demographics of the Medway area, is that they are nothing like that of Hull. It surprised me:
http://tinyurl.com/ccwb2t”