Literacy news
Assessments reveal 100,000 seven-year-olds are failing to master the basics of writing
31 Aug 2010
Nearly one in five seven-year-olds, around 104,700 pupils (19%), are failing to reach Level 2, the standard expected of the age group in writing. This level requires pupils to be able to use past and present tenses, vary their sentence structures, spell common words properly, and use full stops and capital letters. Around one in six (84,000 children) are not reaching this level in reading.
Overall levels of attainment are similar to last year. There has been no change between 2009 and 2010 in the percentage of pupils achieving Level 2 or above in speaking and listening and writing. There is a single percentage point increase at Level 2 or above in reading.
There is a gender gap with girls continuing to out-perform boys. While 89% of girls can read at the expected level or above, 81% of boys can. In writing, 87% of girls make the grade, while 76% of boys do. The gap is slightly narrower when it comes to how well children “speak and listen”, with 90% of girls at or above the expected level, compared with 84% of boys.
Schools minister Nick Gibb says:
“In spite of the hard work of teachers and pupils, there are still too many seven-year-olds not reaching the expected level."
He also labelled as “unacceptable” the gap in achievement between affluent and poor areas calculated on the percentage of children eligible for free school meals. He stated that tackling inequality was the Government’s “top priority” and promised extra funding to schools for every deprived child they teach.
The results were derived from teacher assessments of 553,000 seven-year-olds in England, in the key subjects of reading, writing, speaking and listening maths and science. The assessments are a replacement for Sats, which were scrapped by the previous government.
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