Wolverhampton education system has 'gone severely wrong', says opposition council leader
The opposition council leader has said 'something has gone severely wrong' with Wolverhampton's education system after the city produced its worst ever performance in the school league tables.
Secondary schools in the city tumbled 75 places to 145th in the national performance rankings, which rates schools for the number of pupils that achieve five or more A* -C grades at GCSE, including English and maths.
Last year, 46.4 per cent of pupils achieved the benchmark in Wolverhampton, a drop of 14.6 per cent on the previous years results and more than 10 per cent below the national average.
The figures show that across the city less than half of pupils' taking GCSE exams last year met the Government's benchmark standard.
Describing the results as 'cause for alarm', Councillor Wendy Thompson, the Conservative opposition leader on Wolverhampton City Council said: ""I am dying to know what Labour's excuse is this time.
"The tragedy is not only the young people who are being failed by Labour's refusal to encourage the spreading of best practice between high-performing schools, but also the fact that our GCSE results were one area of the city's education portfolio that was helping to add most value to children's school experience.
"Now, it seems that even that has evaporated. Were it not for the Girls' High School, we would probably have come bottom altogether."
"Something has gone very severely wrong with our education system in Wolverhampton. Ofsted pinpointed the lack of sharing of expertise across schools and a lack of support to schools in their battle to raise standards.
"That has to be where we start in turning this situation round for the future of our young people."
Councillor Phil Page, Wolverhampton City Council's cabinet member for schools, skills and learning, said the authority's performance had been downgraded due to changes in how exam results were recorded.
"We are disappointed that Key Stage 4 outcomes for young people in Wolverhampton fell in 2014 compared to the excellent results recorded in 2013, which were the best in recent years," he said.
"A similar decline has been experienced nationally, primarily down to a number of changes in the way that GCSE outcomes were calculated in 2014 compared to previous years.
"It's important to note that a number of our schools recorded outcomes which are broadly in line with or better than the national average.
"However some schools, particularly academies, have unfortunately recorded more sizeable drops which have had an impact on Wolverhampton's overall performance."
He added that the council was committed to driving up standards in the city's secondary schools.
