Big hopes for SATS progress

Formal warning notice letters have been sent to eight primaries as Peterborough looks to better last year’s position of second bottom in the county for SATS results.

A further 10 primary schools have been issued letters of concern as part of a large action plan being pushed through by Peterborough City Council which has come under fire for the poor results.

A newly released council report states: “Indications from primary schools are that they expect a significant improvement to outcomes in 2017.

“We will only know if their confidence is justified when results are released in July and September.”

Council leader and education portfolio holder Councillor John Holdich vowed last year to improve results from Year Six pupils in 2017.

He said schools will be better prepared this time round for the harder exams which were introduced at short-notice last year, adding: “The challenge still remains the turnover [of pupils].”

The council report lists 20 recent pieces of action taken by the council, one of which was meeting with a senior director at Her Majesty’s Inspectors which inspects schools.

According to the report the director said: “There are no other local authorities with the same range of contextual issues as Peterborough, nor to the same extent.”

The report also references the need to better GCSE results where last year the number of pupils achieving five A* to Cs including maths and English rose to 51.4 per cent.

It states: “The 2016 results have been discussed in both private and public many times since they were released.

“Whilst outcomes in writing at Key Stage 2 and for progress at Key Stage 4 were the highlights, the majority of the outcomes reported require significant improvement.”

Councillors on the children and education scrutiny committee will discuss the report at a public meeting on Monday evening at the Town Hall. A review of the city’s schools strategy, which is being led by Conservative councillor Lynne Ayres, was announced in December and is ongoing.