The new league tables are based on last year’s exams Thousands miss chance of new Bacc
The new league tables are based on last year’s exams Thousands of teenagers in England had no chance of getting the new English Baccalaureate in their GCSEs, official data shows.
At 175 state schools, not one pupil was entered for all five of the subjects counted in the new measure.
Education Secretary Michael Gove says the Bacc is an “aspirational measure” which will drive up standards.
But head teachers complain it was brought in after pupils sat their GCSEs last year.
The government has just published additional league tables data which allows parents to see how individual schools are doing on all 84 GCSE subjects.
This is an update to the secondary school league tables released in January.
The English Bacc was brought in by the coalition government.
It is not a qualification in its own right, but is a measure of how many children get a good GCSE (A* to C grade) in English, maths, two science qualifications, a modern foreign language or classical language and either history or geography.
The January league tables showed that just 16% of 16-year-olds achieved the Baccalaureate last year.
School league tables Find secondary schools in your areaEnter full postcode in England Searchor search by local authority Barking and Dagenham Barnet Barnsley Bath and North East Somerset Bedford Bexley Birmingham Blackburn with Darwen Blackpool Bolton Bournemouth Bracknell Forest Bradford Brent Brighton and Hove Bristol, City of Bromley Buckinghamshire Bury Calderdale Cambridgeshire Camden Central Bedfordshire Cheshire East Cheshire West and Chester City of London Cornwall Coventry Croydon Cumbria Darlington Derby Derbyshire Devon Doncaster Dorset Dudley Durham Ealing East Riding of Yorkshire East Sussex Enfield Essex Gateshead Gloucestershire Greenwich Hackney Halton Hammersmith and Fulham Hampshire Haringey Harrow Hartlepool Havering Herefordshire Hertfordshire Hillingdon Hounslow Isle of Wight Isles of Scilly Islington Kensington and Chelsea Kent Kingston upon Hull, City of Kingston upon Thames Kirklees Knowsley Lambeth Lancashire Leeds Leicester Leicestershire Lewisham Lincolnshire Liverpool Luton Manchester Medway Merton Middlesbrough Milton Keynes Newcastle upon Tyne Newham Norfolk North East Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire North Somerset North Tyneside North Yorkshire Northamptonshire Northumberland Nottingham Nottinghamshire Oldham Oxfordshire Peterborough Plymouth Poole Portsmouth Reading Redbridge Redcar and Cleveland Richmond upon Thames Rochdale Rotherham Rutland Salford Sandwell Sefton Sheffield Shropshire Slough Solihull Somerset South Gloucestershire South Tyneside Southampton Southend-on-Sea Southwark St. Helens Staffordshire Stockport Stockton-on-Tees Stoke-on-Trent Suffolk Sunderland Surrey Sutton Swindon Tameside Telford and Wrekin Thurrock Torbay Tower Hamlets Trafford Wakefield Walsall Waltham Forest Wandsworth Warrington Warwickshire West Berkshire West Sussex Westminster Wigan Wiltshire Windsor and Maidenhead Wirral Wokingham Wolverhampton Worcestershire YorkGo
In more than half of state secondaries (1,600), fewer than 10% of pupils gained the necessary GCSEs, and 270 of England’s state secondaries scored zero on this measure.
England is the only UK nation to publish school league tables.
The new data shows that about 25,000 16-year-olds were in the 175 schools where no pupil was entered for all five of the subjects which count towards the Bacc.
Of this 175 total, 44 were academies – schools which are state-funded but independently-run.
Academies were promoted under Labour as a way of turning around failing schools.
The coalition government is encouraging all good schools to apply for academy status.
The new data also shows the extent to which a school’s league table position is influenced by points scored by pupils who took courses which were not GCSEs, but which were counted as such. These are usually vocational subjects.
Best GCSE results Lowest GCSE results Best Baccalaureate results Best A/AS level results Most improved GCSE results
Mr Gove says under Labour too many pupils were pushed towards less academic courses to boost their school’s league table position.
He has been accused of setting “retrospective targets” for schools – but says publication of this detailed data will give parents and others information they need and “shine a light on excellence”.
“This is the next stage in our drive for greater transparency,” he said.
“More information will allow people to identify the schools that are performing well and to interrogate schools about the choices they have made.”
At 27 schools, no pupil was entered for a language counted in the Bacc; at 42 schools none was entered for the humanities component and at 33, none was entered for the science element.
Mr Gove insists the standard measure on which schools are judged – that of proportion of pupils getting five good GCSEs including English and maths will remain central to the accountability system.
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