White pupils making least academic progress of all ethnic groups

WHITE children are the least likely to achieve their potential between primary and secondary school, official data show.

Department for Education (DFE) figures show that the group is making less progress than their peers from all other ethnic communities by the time they are 16 years old.

The statistics also reveal that 346 secondary schools – more than one in 10 – are considered under-performing, meaning they fall below the “floor standard”. Another 257 were deemed to be “coasting”.

These numbers appear to be an improvement, but this year ministers have excluded University Technical Colleges (UTCS), further education colleges and studio schools from their calculations. These tend to specialise in vocational and technical qualifications and generally perform worse than mainstream schools.

When these are also excluded from last year’s data set, figures show that the number of below-average schools has gone up, from 8.9 per cent to 9.2 per cent for coasting schools and from 10.4 per cent to 11.6 per cent for schools that fail to meet the floor standard.

In previous years, schools have been ranked according to the proportion of pupils achieving at least five grade A* to Cs at GCSE. But this was scrapped two years ago in favour of a system that measures progress and attainment.

A school’s Progress 8 score measures the progress of each pupil from the end of primary school up to GCSES. It compares pupils’ results with the achievements of other pupils that have the same prior attainment and measures performance across eight qualifications at age 16. The average progress score is zero, so a positive score means pupils are making above average progress and a negative score means below average.

This year, the average Progress 8 score for white children in state schools was the lowest at -0.10, compared with -0.02 for mixed race pupils, 0.45 for Asian, 0.12 for black and 1.03 for Chinese. White children had the second lowest score for attainment at age 16, with an average of 46.1. Chinese pupils had the highest score of 64.2, followed by Asian children, while black children had the lowest.

The figures, which cover every secondary in England, show the Northwest had the highest proportion of under-performing schools.

Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said: “Making sure that all pupils, regardless of their background, are able to fulfil their potential is a key priority and these results show that more pupils across the country are doing just that.”