City could do better in GCSEs

Oct 18 2007 By Tony Collins, Birmingham Mail

BIRMINGHAM'S 16-year-olds have moved up another notch with a further improvement in their GCSE results, according to Government figures released today.

The city's secondary school pupils have taken their benchmark five or more GCSEs to a new level with a record pass rate 60.8 per cent, up from last year's 58.9 per cent.

This rise, revealed today by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, has now seen Birmingham achieve a near 25 per cent improvement in its GCSE results over the last decade.

Since 1998, Birmingham's GCSE performance has risen by 24.8 per cent.

But when English and maths are included among the list of subjects, Birmingham's pass rate for five or more GCSEs in 2007 drops to 39.8 per cent.

Worryingly, this is down on last year's figure of 40.8 per cent when English and maths was included in the statistics for the first time.

Elsewhere in the region, Solihull has improved in both figures, with 69 per cent for all subjects (up from 66.7 per cent) and 52.6 per cent including English and maths (50.5 per cent in 2006).

And Sandwell emerges in the top 20 local authorities in the country for year-on-year improvement, with its overall five or more GCSEs rising to 52.2 per cent.

Birmingham's Cabinet member for education, Coun Les Lawrence, said today: "Although there has been a small drop in the results when factoring in English and maths, the Transforming Education agenda across the city is helping to immediately address this."