Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the levels of attainment inequality in primary education across different local education authority areas of the UK.

​The Department for Education produces statistics for England only.

The Department publishes attainment, in headline measures for state-funded schools, at the end of Key Stage 2 by local authority and region. An extract from the latest figures for 2017/18 are attached. The source of these figures can be found in table L1 of the 'Key stage 2 local authority tables' here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/key-stage-2-and-multi-academy-trust-performance-2018-revised.

Further local authority data, including for previous years, can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-key-stage-2.1

Due to change in methodology and headline measures, figures are only comparable between 2009/10 – 2014/15 and 2015/16 – 2016/17. Changes made within the 2017/18 writing teachers assessment frameworks mean that judgements in 2018 are not directly comparable to those made using the previous interim frameworks in 2016 and 2017.

[1]For each year, select the ‘revised’ publication and then open the ‘Local authority and regional tables’. For 2015/16 – 2016/17 the headline measures are the percentage of pupils reaching the expected standard and can be found in tables L1, L2 and L3. For 2009/10 – 2014/15 the headline measures are the percentage achieving level 4 or above and can be found in tables 12-16 (2013/14 – 2014/15); tables 12-15 (2012/13); tables 13-15 (2011/12); table 11 (2010/11); table 18 (2009/10 – in the ‘national and local authority tables’).