HC Deb 04 May 2004 vol 420 cc1429-30W
Mr. Hoban

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will 1ist(a) each of the external controls over schools referred to in the document, "Devolved Decision Making: Delivering Better Public Services: Refining Targets and Performance Management", and (b) the purpose of each. [165293]

Mr. Stephen Twigg

The definition of external control used in the document is a very broad one. The list identified includes very few direct requirements of schools, but rather a wide range of school performance measures, the majority of which are attributable to

Mr. Miliband

The results from the 2003 National Curriculum tests showed that 75 per cent. of 11-year-olds in England reached Level 4 in English and 73 per cent. in mathematics. These results represent a significant improvement in standards—of 12 percentage points in English and 11 percentage points in mathematics—since 1997, reflecting the impact of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies on primary schools. We remain absolutely committed, through our new Primary Strategy, to supporting schools to achieve the ambitious targets we have set for standards of literacy and numeracy.

The results for Easington constituency as a whole, are slightly below the national average in English and above the national average for mathematics and show only a small improvement in mathematics since 2000.

The results for Easington constituency broken down by school are as follows:

Ofsted and their arrangements for conducting section 10 inspections. These place no performance management requirements on schools as nearly all of them are graded judgments made by inspectors when they visit a school on, currently, a six-year cycle.

Ofsted have recently consulted on and are reviewing their current arrangements for school inspection to ensure that parents, teachers, Government and the public continue to receive full, frank, relevant and more frequent information about the performance of schools whilst reducing the burden of inspection. The Department is also currently consulting on an approach to a school profile through which the schools' performance would be recorded.