Civitas Blog

Mr Blair says he wants to move away from talking about trust in him to focus on education. Yet the Government’s claims about educational attainment since 1997 also throw doubt on his honesty

Labour’s education manifesto contains a headline comparison between 1997 and 2005. In 1997 this country was 42nd in the ‘world education league’ and in 2005 we were third best in the world for literacy at age ten. The only international comparison of literacy at age ten is the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) whose last results were for 2001, not 2005. England did indeed come third (Scotland was 14th, but no doubt has a different manifesto).

Now here comes the geek bit. The response rate to the survey was only 57% of the original sample. Only two other countries out of 35 fell below 60% (and they also came high up the table). Most others had response rates over 80% (Germany 98% and France 93%). Moreover, pupils in England were in their 5th year of schooling, whereas in most other countries they were in year 4 (only two other countries tested in year 5).

Why is the sample response rate more than just the preoccupation of maths anoraks who should get out more? The main fault of our education system is that it fails the least able pupils in each age group. Our best schools are probably as good as the best anywhere in the world, but our worst schools are well below par, as official figures testify. In 2003/04 only 53% of 16 year-olds achieved five or more GCSE passes at grades A* to C and 4% failed to pass anything. At age 11 only 74% achieved the required standard in maths, well below the Government’s own target of 85%.

A recent OfSTED report found that 44% of boys aged 11 and 29% of girls were leaving primary school unable to write properly. It attributed the failure to poor teaching and declared that one in three lessons in English and maths were unsatisfactory.

Here is a question for Mr Blair. How many of the schools considered by OfSTED to be providing unsatisfactory lessons respond to international surveys? We might conjecture that the 57% response rate was because badly performing schools did not want to make their failure obvious to the outside world. If the schools that responded tended to be the good ones, it would make the overall results look much better than they really were. Some supporting evidence comes from 14th-ranked Scotland, where the initial response rate was 76%.

The Labour manifesto does not only pretend that the reading figures are for 2005 when they are for 2001, it also implies that the country has improved from 42nd in the ‘world education league’ to third. But what it calls the ‘world education league’ is a comparison of the impact of the education system on the economic competitiveness of countries. Comparing this wider measure with the PIRLS reading study is a bit like claiming that the England cricket team has improved since 1997, as shown by the tremendous success of the rugby team in winning the world cup.

In any event, the most recent comparison of international achievement, called the ‘world education league’ by the press, was the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which gives figures for 41 countries in 2000 and 2003. Between those years, the UK dropped from fourth in science to 11th, from seventh in reading to 11th and from eighth in maths to 18th. Perhaps Mr Blair is right. The debate should move on to education.