17 October 2003
Ministers should scrap all national targets for secondary school pupils because they have now 'served their purpose', an influential committee of MPs reported this week.
The Commons' education select committee, chaired by Labour MP Barry Sheerman, called for extensive use of locally determined targets for schools in a wide-ranging study of pupil attainment, published on October 15.
Although MPs feel that centrally determined targets have been useful in establishing 'clear expectations' for schools, and have helped raise general standards, the committee states: 'We are not convinced that requiring teachers to achieve nationally predetermined targets is still the best way forward.'
In particular, MPs said it was time that the Department for Education and Skills recognised a distinction between 'low achievement' and 'under-achievement' among pupils.
That, they argued, can only be achieved regionally because local agents can best determine whether a comparatively high-achieving school might not be doing as well as it should, while low-achieving schools could be doing well once their pupil intake is taken into account.
Sheerman's committee is also critical of wider government initiatives at secondary level. They claim many schemes lack 'the clear focus of the primary phase'.
The committee is concerned that Education Action Zones are being merged into the Excellence in Cities programme before there has been any significant evaluation of their success.
Other findings in the report reaffirm the link between poverty and pupil attainment.
Education Secretary Charles Clarke refused to back down on his commitment to national benchmarks, claiming there was no reason why they couldn't go 'hand in hand with the government's commitment to personalised learning'
PFoct2003
