Districts GCSE marks fall below national average
The percentage of pupils in the district gaining five A* to C grades, including English and mathematics, this summer was 56.72 per cent, compared to 58.12 per cent nationally.
In 2010, 60.73 per cent of the district’s pupils achieved five A* to C grades, including English and mathematics, which decreased to 60.08 per cent last year.
The head of West Berkshire Council’s education service, Ian Pearson, blamed the fall on exam boards raising grade boundaries in English.
However, the percentage of the district’s pupils gaining A* to C grades in English fell by almost 10 per cent, from 72.73 per cent last year to 62.87 per cent this summer, compared to a modest fall of 2.71 per cent nationally, from 68.66 per cent in 2011 to 66.17 per cent this year.
Mr Pearson also said the council was not planning to join an alliance of other councils, pupils and schools launching a legal battle against exam regulator Ofqual and exam boards AQA and Edexcel.
“Consideration was given as to whether action should be taken.
“We discussed this with headteachers as well.
“But we did not participate in the action,” Mr Pearson said.
“Whether this is a reversible decision or not, is not something I can answer now.”
At a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny management commission last week, Jeff Brooks (Lib Dem, Thatcham West) said that the council had “missed a trick” by not taking legal action, and Emma Webster (Con, Birch Copse) said that the council had done a disservice to the district’s pupils.
David Rendel (Lib Dem, Thatcham Central) added: “We are a very prosperous area in West Berkshire.
“It’s quite a shock this year that we’ve dropped well below the national average.
“In 2010, we were five per cent above the national average, in 2011 we were 2.5 per cent above the national average and now we’re below the national average.
“There seems to be a pattern emerging.
“The local authority needs to take action even if we don’t control some of the schools now.”
In response, Mr Pearson highlighted the improvement made by West Berkshire pupils in mathematics, with the percentage of pupils achieving an A* to C mark, up from 66.94 in 2011 to 71.64 in 2012.
“There has been some significant improvement in overall achievement in West Berkshire schools in maths, but disproportionately there has been a significant drop in English results.
“We need to be working with schools to assist them in whatever way we can to improve performance going forward,” he added.
Council spokesman Keith Ulyatt said that he believed this was the first time the district’s schools had fallen below the national average and confirmed that this was the case since West Berkshire took over responsibility for education in 1998.
He said: “We have no record of West Berkshire results falling below south east or national average results previously.
“This appears to be a dip, especially in English, which was affected more so than national English results, and was not predicted by schools.”
