The government's\u00a0key measure of school worth, Progress 8, is under fire from headteachers who say that it discriminates against\u00a0\u00a0secondary schools in traditional English working-class areas where there is usually both economic deprivation and a low proportion of pupils speaking English as a second language.<\/p>\n
This is because Progress 8 measures\u00a0the improvement a child has made since coming from primary school. \u00a0This, its critics say, means it discriminates in favour of c<\/span>hildren who speak English as a second language as they usually start slowly at school and then catch up fast as they become fluent. \u00a0Because of this, schools with a large proportion of such children seem to add a lot of value. \u00a0Compounding this is the fact that migrant families usually (though not universally) strongly support their children\u2019s education and are ambitious for them \u2013 unlike, it seems, some families from more traditional communities.<\/p>\n The Times quoted\u00a0James Eldon, principal of the Manchester Enterprise Academy, where 90% of the GCSE year are eligible for free school meals, saying:<\/p>\n \u201cIf this were any other ethnic group at the bottom, people would be unsettled. \u00a0But because it\u2019s the white working-class, it\u2019s somehow less controversial.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It also quotes Ian Butterfield, head of Hindley high school near Wigan, who told the BBC that the flaw in the system was that deprivation was not taken into account. \u00a0While the \u201cwinners\u201d in the new system were more affluent schools, he said it was almost impossible for those in predominantly white working-class areas, such as parts of the northwest and northeast, not to receive a negative score.<\/p>\n Inevitably, its feckless \/ uncaring (you choose) parents who are getting the blame. \u00a0If only they'd take their children's education more seriously! \u00a0If only they'd want them to get on in life, and be more middle class! \u00a0If only, ... . \u00a0But someone has to be at the bottom of the league tables \u2013 that is, after all, what they are for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government's\u00a0key measure of school worth, Progress 8, is under fire from headteachers who say that it discriminates against\u00a0\u00a0secondary schools in traditional English working-class areas where there is usually both economic deprivation and a low proportion of pupils speaking English...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}