Schools: League Tables

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

15:18

Asked by

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider omitting from school league tables children on free school meals or statemented as having special educational needs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to giving parents more information rather than less. We want to raise the attainment of the most disadvantaged and lowest attaining pupils, and to report on how schools do in narrowing the attainment gap. We will also support such children through the introduction of the pupil premium, which will be targeted at those on free school meals, many of whom will also have special educational needs.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I thank the Minister for his reply and note that the Secretary of State for Education has recently decided that the judgments in league tables on the passage through GCSE for five subjects is to be tightened up, to ensure that schools choose not the softest subjects but rather the crucial subjects for their children to take. I commend him on that. However, given that schools will be judged on their work with not just the highest flyers but children with the greatest need, I wonder whether it would be wise in the league tables to exclude children with special educational needs from the attempt to measure schools comparatively, and to include a list or proportion of the number of specially educationally disadvantaged children at a school to ensure that head teachers and others do not attempt to escape from their responsibilities.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

First, I think everyone in this House agrees on the need to try to narrow the attainment gap. The previous Government did quite a lot of work in that regard, which I am happy to recognise. I recognise the challenge that schools have with special educational needs but, by the same token, many who know far more than I do about the issue would not want to take the step of excluding children with special educational needs from measurement or being treated in the same way as other pupils in the school. More generally, it is important to publish more information about a school’s performance. My noble friend is absolutely right that we need to hold those schools to account for their performance and we think that that is best done by publishing more rather than less information.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

Is the Minister aware, as I am sure he is, that when the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, produced her report, she referred to children who needed statements with special educational needs as being approximately 2 to 2.5 per cent of the 20 per cent of children who are not statemented, and should not be, but who have special needs? Is he also aware that many of those are concentrated in schools that have a welcoming atmosphere, and that take on board children with special needs at the risk of those special needs interfering with their attainment? Surely—this applies to all Governments—the ideal is to measure the value added by individual schools rather than merely looking at the attainment.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I accept fully the force of that point, and one of the changes that we are keen to make with our new floor standards is to measure both attainment and progression. The previous floor standards had only an attainment measure and we are planning to introduce a progression measure. I accept the force of that entirely. To go back to the previous point, it is clear that children come in all shapes and sizes, and one needs to try to have measures that reflect what a school does to bring out the best in those children, regardless of where they start from.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

Is my noble friend aware that many years ago I worked for the Inner London Education Authority in Hackney, dealing only with children receiving free meals? There was by no means any link between the fact that they received free school meals and their educational ability, and it would be a great mistake to use that as a divining rod of what the results should be.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with that point. On the back of the Question I looked at precisely that area, to try to correlate schools with the number of free-school-meal pupils and the results. A quick look bore out the point made by my noble friend. Mossbourne Academy has 54 per cent of its pupils on free school meals and 72 per cent of those pupils get five A to Cs including English, maths and science.