A THINK-TANK is to investigate why the Government's massive investment in enhancing the literacy and numeracy of primary school pupils has not produced an equivalent boost to GCSE results.
The Institute for Public Policy Research plans to spend a year trying to establish the reasons for the disparity.
According to the Sunday Times, figures collated by the think-tank show that literacy test scores for 11-year-olds jumped 18 percentage points between 1996 and 2004.
But when the same children came to take their GCSEs five years later, their results improved by only four percentage points - a rise no greater than would be predicted by long-term trends.
That would appear to put a big question mark over the effectiveness of the Government's massive investment in its literacy and numeracy strategy on which, according to some estimates, they have spent £1 billion.
Attainment
Some commentators are likely to say that the figures reflect poor standards in the country's secondary schools, while others will question whether the national test results at 11 accurately reflect pupils' abilities.
The newspaper reported that at a private Whitehall seminar hosted by the IPPR earlier this month, the think-tank's senior economist Peter Robinson told education officials: "We had that huge surge in attainment by 11-year-olds, yet five years later when they took their GCSEs the rate of improvement trundled along as before."
It also quoted an un-named senior official from the Department for Education and Skills as saying: "It is undeniable that the rate of increase in attainment (by primary schoolchildren) has not been matched by the same rate of increase in attainment in GCSEs."
An IPPR spokesman stressed that the think-tank's research on the issue was incomplete, and unpublished.
The spokesman acknowledged that the research to date did appear to back up long-standing suspicions that improvements at age 11 were not being carried through to age 16, but cautioned against leaping to the conclusion that the literacy and numeracy strategy is not working.
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The problem is simply that the key stage 2 SAT's exams are a good indicator of attaimnet at the the end of KS 2 but not a good baseline for measuring attainmnet throughout ks3 and ks4. This attainment should be measured with a terst that is taken immediately at the start of Year 7. The same SAT's paper even. What you will find is that the coaching and cramming that went into the preparation for KS2 is not having the long term effects on literacy levels. Indeed a test at the start of year 7 will overcome much of the suspicion that secondary teachers have of the system of testing and the validity of the data it throws up. If a new test is performed very early in the first term of year 7, then this will demonstrate fairly quickly that judgements about literacy standards at secondary level are currently unsafe.
Having taught students aged 11-16 English for ten years, I would say the 'gap' relects the vastly different requirements of the KS2, KS3 and GCSE examinations. I have seen pupils who have very weak literacy skills achieving a level 5 at KS3. The same students would never produce the work required to achieve a 'C' grade at GCSE in English and English Literature, despite the fact that a level 5 according to the DfES seems to guarantee a 'C' at GCSE.
English teachers have, for many years, seen the KS3 results as an unreliable guide to GCSE results in the future. Tests are repeatedly sent for remarks due to poor levels of marking; the tests themselves are becoming more and more obtuse yet results are often consistent, which implies that markers are guided to the results needed by QCA and Government figures.