§ 24. Mr. Moynihanasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what information he has about the standards of academic achievement in Inner London education authority schools; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Chris PattenHer Majesty's inspectors have commented on the quality of educational provision in a number of reports published on inspections of ILEA schools. The Department's school leavers survey measures the CSE and GCE achievements of young people at the time they leave school, and the results, broken down by local education authority, are published regularly in the Department's series of statistical bulletins. Examination results on their own are insufficient, however, as one of the possible measures of what the schools have achieved for their pupils unless allowance is made of pupils' background. The Department's "Statistical Bulletin 13/84", entitled "School Standards and Spending", showed that the socio-economic background of pupils is highly associated statistically with their examination results. The bulletin suggested that when allowance is made for background factors, pupils' examination results in the ILEA are close to those that might be expected. The bulletin also showed that at the level of the LEA there was very little association between levels of achievement and levels of expenditure, which in the ILEA are uniquely high.
The statistical bulletin analysed examination achievement at the level of the local education authority. Within that unit there are great variations. The Government's policies for raising standards, set out in "Better Schools" (Cmnd. 9469) involve raising the performance of poorer schools to the level of the best comparable schools. Those policies are as relevant in inner London as elsewhere.