Good news despite marking problems for borough education

THURROCK is claiming an improvement in education standards, despite the chaos in marking and returning Key Stage Two results.

Though the borough has suffered like many others with six of its schools still awaiting results because of problems in the national marking service, its results.

Results show a good improvement in maths performance at Level 4+ and a slight decrease in English and science. Nationally there has been a single percentage point increase in English and maths while science remained the same. This means that the gap between Thurrock and national has closed.

The decrease in the percentage of pupils reaching Level 5+ nationally in English has been reflected in Thurrock. Level 5+ rose slightly in maths and fell slightly in science. There has been criticism nationally of the Level 5+ English marking and several Thurrock schools are contesting their English results.

Chafford Hundred Primary School is still waiting on its maths results, as is Lansdowne Primary for English.

In all 15 percent of Thurrock's schools - six of 39 - are still waiting for final complete results.

The new national indicator of the percentage of pupils gaining Level 4 in both English and maths rose by one per cent. For the fourth year running Thurrock's results rose in line with those nationally.

Councillor Sue MacPherson, Thurrock Council's Cabinet member for Children's Services, said: "It is disappointing that not all of the results have been received and more so that several schools have had to return their English papers for re-marking.

"I shall be writing to the Government to express my extreme concern that these young children have been let down so badly after going through the effort of sitting these examinations.

"Despite these problems, there are several success stories this year with nine schools improving their Level 4+ English scores by more than ten percentage points, ten schools doing that in maths and seven in science."

Three schools, West Thurrock, Stifford and St Mary's all recorded better than ten percentage points year-on-year improvements in all three categories at Level 4+.

Councillor MacPherson said: "It is unfortunate that due to national problems, all these trends are provisional until all results and appeals are completed."