A former Department for Education civil servant has said ministers should ditch their claim that 1.9m more children are being taught in “good” or “outstanding” schools than in 2010, because it is misleading.
A paper published today by Jon Andrews of the Education Policy Institute (EPI) says the DfE’s “go to statistic” misrepresents the level of improvement in school standards.
It comes as another key DfE soundbite - that there are more teachers than ever before - was undermined by new statistics showing that the number of teachers in the system has fallen for the first time in six years.
The new EPI paper suggests the DfE’s line on school improvement is both factually accurate and misleading.
It says the increase in pupil population and the shift in the schools pupils attend account for more than a quarter of the increase in children in “good” or better schools - 578,000 children in total.
Mr Andrews also highlights the fact that 579,000 pupils attend schools that are rated as “good” or “outstanding” but that have not been inspected since at least 2010, according to the EPI.
They include 309,000 pupils in academies that have not been inspected since at least 2010 and have never been inspected as academies.
The EPI paper also questions the effect of Ofsted changing its inspection outcome from “satisfactory” to “requires improvement” in driving up the number of good schools.
Mr Andrews says this was intended to push schools that had previously been “satisfactory” to do better.
However, he warns that there is a risk that as “requires improvement” is more punitive than “satisfactory”, it will make inspectors less likely to give it.
The paper says that for primary schools, the introduction of the “requires improvement” grade was associated with a large increase in the proportion of schools improving their grade at the next inspection.
The EPI paper also questions the impact of government reforms on driving up standards.
Mr Andrews, director for school system and performance and deputy head of research at the EPI said: “In my time in the Department for Education, I was involved in crafting countless ‘lines to take’ for ministers - those key messages with a killer statistic used in debates and in the media.
“For government statisticians, lines to take can be a challenge. They need to be something that gets the point across quickly and be something that ministers actually want to say. But at the same time you’ve probably got a long list of caveats and explanatory notes that you’d love to use.
“And of course, it is absolutely essential that your statistics are not misleading. Whilst it is easy to be cynical from the outside, statisticians in government take that incredibly seriously.
“That is why we now really need to stop hearing DfE’s favourite statistic. There are unlikely to be many in education circles who are unaware that ‘there are now 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools than there were in 2010’.”
He said a search of Hansard reveals at least 40 mentions spread across two prime ministers, four secretaries of state, and numerous ministers - including non-DfE ministers.
Mr Andrews added: “The department frequently claims that the increase is due to the reforms put in place since 2010.”
But he questioned whether this is really the case.
“For example, the large structural reforms, through the expansion of the academies programme and the introduction of free schools, have so far resulted in little or no impact on overall attainment.
“The trends in the increase pre-date the introduction of the new national curriculum and new GCSEs,” he adds.
“Given what we know about the impact of reforms so far, ministers and the department should ask themselves ‘is this scale of improvement plausible?’
“If the answer is no, it is time to ditch their favourite line.”
However a Department for Education spokeswoman said:
A DfE spokesperson said: “The facts are clear - the vast majority of pupils are in good or outstanding schools across the country, 1.9 million more than in 2010, and an increase from 66 per cent to 86 per cent over that time.
“Academic standards continue to rise, with more pupils reaching the expected standard in maths at the end of primary school and 154,000 more six year olds on track to become fluent readers since the phonics check was introduced in 2012.”
