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Headline: Gender Gap Widens
Description: Boys have fallen even further behind girls in their writing skills despite a marginal overall improvement in youngsters' performance in compulsory national tests taken this spring in English and maths, new figures revealed yesterday.
A record 79% of 11-year-olds achieved the expected level for their age in English - an increase of one percentage point from last year - while 75% of pupils achieved the expected standard in maths, again a one percentage point increase.

But the results remain far short of the ambitious 85% target set for both English and maths, which ministers have put back to next year. They are unlikely to be met even then.

Critics warned the government that a third of youngsters would start secondary school this autumn without the necessary skills to enable them to fulfil their potential.

The provisional figures for England from the Department for Education and Skills reveal a huge gender gap has opened up between boys' and girls' abilities to write at that age - so-called key stage 2 - with 72% of girls reaching the expected level in that part of the English test, compared with only 55% of boys.

Level four is the required standard for 11-year-olds. But at the harder level five, just 10% of boys and 21% of girls are achieving that standard.

The gulf is also evident at a much earlier age. In the results of the tests taken by seven-year-olds towards the end of their first three years at primary school, just 54% of boys reached the standard for their age compared with 70% for girls.

The key stage 2 tests are considered important as they show youngsters' attainment in the subjects of English, maths and science in the final year of primary school. The results determine schools' rankings in performance, or league tables, and are eagerly consulted by parents choosing schools.

This year there was also no further year-on-year progress in science, with 86% doing well for the second year running and no evidence of any gender gap.

The schools minister, Jacqui Smith, yesterday hailed the improvements: "We welcome this year's record results. The level of achievement for boys and girls in English and maths has never been higher. It shows that this government's unrelenting focus on the basics is paying off. I warmly congratulate children and teachers for their hard work in achieving these results."

She went on: "The landscape of achievement has changed dramatically since 1998 when we introduced the national literacy and numeracy strategies. At the time we said that level four should be the target for all children - not simply an average, as many critics argued."

But Andrew Haldenby, the director of the Reform thinktank, said: "It's the same story as we saw last week with A-levels and as we will see this week with GCSEs. A full third of students are not fully prepared for secondary school. It's time for their parents to be given more choices, to open new schools in those areas where standards are poor. The time for a new approach is long overdue."

The shadow education secretary, David Cameron, said: "The fact that the government has missed its targets yet again shows that they're not getting the basics right. Once the government promised to resign if schools failed to reach their targets. Now ministers are just resigned to failure."

Headteachers and teachers called for the targets to be scrapped. David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Primary schools should be praised for a set of results which show virtually an across-the-board improvement in standards. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for schools to raise their game and reach the artificial targets set by the government.

"There is, frankly, little chance of hitting next year's targets and to expect this of schools is wholly unreasonable. The targets should be abandoned. The government should recognise that primary schools will continue to need a high degree of support if they are to successfully tackle levels of attainment among children with special needs and from deprived backgrounds."

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Despite the government's crude mechanism for measuring primary children's achievement, the underlying message is that primary teachers have sustained and secured further improvements in pupil performance. This is a very real cause for celebration. The government is now, rightly, distancing itself from the targets it had previously plucked out of the air."
Date: 31.08.2005
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