Peterborough near bottom of three primary school league tables

Peterborough is near the bottom of three separate league tables for primary school education results, new figures from the city council show.
Education newsEducation news
Education news

Newly validated SATS results for 2017 have Peterborough finishing second bottom for the second year running while the city has also slipped down the tables for children aged five and seven years old.

The only improvement has come in phonics (a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully) with Peterborough moving from third bottom to 10th bottom out of 152 local education authorities.

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Council cabinet member for education Lynne Ayres said: “Focusing on the three core subjects, improvement has been achieved in reading and maths and this now needs to be replicated across all three every year.

“Actions taken to drive improvement in education, following a thorough review of the education system in Peterborough last year, have made a positive impact and there are some schools who have achieved very good outcomes, but too many have not shown sufficient improvement.

“We have issued two formal warning notices and 12 letters of concern to schools who need to show improvement and we are in the process of conducting formal monitoring visits to these schools.

“The other steps we have taken so we work more effectively include a restructure of the School Standards and Effectiveness Team, and the appointment of a shared strategic service director for education to work across both Peterborough and Cambridgeshire.”

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Peterborough is bottom at SATS for reading and maths and second bottom for writing (after falling 30 places from last year). This put the city second bottom overall, with 52 per cent of pupils reaching all of the expected standards, 10 percentage points below the national average.

Meanwhile, for children in Year 2 Peterborough is now 145th in reading, 142nd in writing and 143rd in maths. All three positions are worse than a year earlier.

Peterborough is also third bottom for the percentage of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development, eight percentage points below the national average.

North West Cambridgeshire MP Shailesh Vara said: “These results are hugely disappointing and no amount of excuses from the council can justify them. The council will doubtless say that the results are due to ‘unique’ circumstances to Peterborough but other authorities with ‘unique’ circumstances seem to be able to manage and so should Peterborough.”