Five hundred secondary schools in England did not meet the government's minimum target for GCSE attainment, the annual performance tables show. Ministers unapologetically "raised the bar", saying the benchmark of five good grades must include English and maths.
They want a quarter of pupils in every school to manage this - but in almost a sixth of schools they did not.
Yet many do well on a new "value added" measure taking account of factors such as gender, ethnicity and deprivation.
The tables confirm that, across the country, 45.8% of pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 of the national curriculum attained the equivalent of five GCSEs at grade C or above including English and maths. The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, said this figure was "shocking".
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- 14 - 17 January, 2009
BETT 2009 - UK
