Schools to face tough achievement targets in education white paper

Schools are to be set tough achievement targets and will face being taken over if they fail to meet them, today's education white paper is expected to say. Secondary schools will be considered failing if fewer than 35% of their pupils get five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, and the number of students making two levels of progress between the ages of 11 and 16 (key stages 3 and 4) is below the national average. The measure will replace the Labour government's target of more than 30% of pupils achieving five C grades including English and maths. Primary schools are expected to be told that they will be below the floor if fewer than 60% of their pupils reach level 4 in English and maths and the number making two levels of progress between ages five and 11 (key stages 1 and 2) is below the national average. There is currently no target for primaries. Any school that fails to meet the targets will face intervention, such as being turned into an academy. The move means that many more schools are likely to be identified as failing. The targets are expected to be outlined in a white paper published by the Department for Education today. The white paper represents an overhaul of the English schools system and is expected to lay out proposals covering teacher training, qualifications and assessment, inspections, league tables and funding. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said last week that he wanted trainee teachers to spend more time in the classroom. That is expected to mean a shift away from university-led courses to more training in schools. School leaders are also likely to be given unlimited time to scrutinise teachers, scrapping a rule that says teachers can be formally observed for only three hours a year. Plans have also been mooted to scrap funding for teacher trainees who gain a third class degree. The white paper, titled The Importance of Teaching, is also likely to contain sweeping reforms to qualifications. This could mean abandoning modular GCSEs in favour of linear exams taken after two years of study. Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme at the weekend, Gove said: "We want to get rid of modularisation of GCSEs. Instead of GCSEs being split into bite-sized elements we think it's important that at the end of the GCSE course the student should be examined on everything they have learned at one time. "So we'll have fewer exams but a concentration on a more rigorous approach at age 16. I think that balance between a greater emphasis on standards but also greater freedom for teachers to teach and less time and money being spent on examinations is a good thing." He said the "piecemeal" modular approach had contributed to dumbing down of exams because pupils were able to improve their marks by taking resits. Reforms of qualifications would pave the way for an "English baccalaureate", which would reward pupils for achieving five good GCSEs in English, maths, science, foreign languages and a humanities subject. Students could also be marked on their spelling, punctuation and grammar in GCSE exams and schools could be prevented from using vocational courses as "equivalent" qualifications to push themselves up the league tables. A shake-up of league tables, which are used by parents choosing schools, is likely to promote take-up of languages, as well as other traditional subjects such as history and geography, effectively rewarding schools where pupils opt for core subjects. The government believes the move will counter the "catastrophic decline" of languages under Labour, the Telegraph reported. Learning a language was made optional from the age of 14 in 2004 and has declined sharply The white paper is also likely to include plans to introduce a reading test for six-year-olds to check if they can read simple words. Proposals are also expected to streamline Ofsted inspections, reducing to four the number of categories used to judge schools. Under reforms introduced under Labour, inspectors rate schools on a number of additional measures such as community cohesion and pupil wellbeing. The changes could mean inspectors focus on four areas – leadership, behaviour, achievement and teaching standards. Ministers have already revealed plans to improve behaviour by allowing teachers to search pupils for more items, including mobile phones and pornography, and improving guidance on when teachers can use force. It comes a day after Ofsted's chief inspector suggested that weak teachers should be removed from classrooms and warned that pupils are still being subjected to "dull lessons". The quality of teaching in schools is too variable and not good enough in half of England's secondaries and in more than two-fifths of primaries, Ofsted's annual report found.