Local statistics presented to the Children's Health, Social Care and Education Committee show Swindon's GCSE results have significantly declined over the last three years.
Local statistics presented to the Children's Health, Social Care and Education Committee show Swindon's GCSE results have significantly declined over the last three years.
In the last three years, Swindon's average GCSE results have dropped from an average of 56% of Swindon students achieving 5 A*-C GCSE results (Including English & Maths) to 52% in the last school year. This has left Swindon in the bottom 25% of local authorities in England for GGSE performance. Swindon's GCSE results for just 5 A*-C (not necessarily including English & Maths) has suffered an even greater fall from 76% to 61% in the last three years.
Key Stage 2 SATs results have also failed to keep up with national increases in KS2 assessment results across England with students at a Level 4 or above in reading declining by 2% from 91% to 89%.
The Swindon Labour Group's Shadow Lead for Education, Councillor Carol Shelley, said: "Clearly the decline in good GCSE results is very worrying for Swindon and shows that the government's education reforms haven't been helpful in Swindon. Key Stage 2 SATs results are significantly better in Swindon compared to the national average than Key Stage 3 GCSE results, however even at Key Stage 2 we've seen a drop in results in reading.
Given that so many of Swindon's schools are now academies, which are not under the auspices of the local authority, Swindon's MPs need to be challenging the Department for Education to get Swindon schools the necessary support to bring them back up to at least the national average. I haven't heard them say they've been doing this so hopefully these results will spur them in to action.
What I'd like to see Swindon Council do is be an advocate for Swindon's schools to get the resources they need from government to improve results. Again I have heard nothing from the Conservative administration on this and I'd like to see more done.
The worrying thing for me is that Swindon's secondary schools are now having their budgets squeezed to such an extent that there will likely be teaching staff redundancies, just at the time when they need more assistance to improve their results."