Four Lewisham schools on England's 'under-performing' list

The Department of Education has published a list of London's under-performing schools. Four Lewisham schools feature on the list, making our borough's total second only to Lambeth's. The Mirror reports:

England's worst school have been revealed as official figures show 365 education centres have failed to meet the government's minimum standards. One in eight of England's mainstream secondaries were under-performing in 2017, according to new statistics. This is up from 282 schools , just under one in 10 - the year before. 

According to analysis of the data, it means 260,783 schoolchildren are now being taught at under-performing secondaries - about one in 12 (8.6%), compared to 206,991 (6.8%) in 2016.  Schools fall below the government's performance threshold if pupils fail to make enough progress across eight subjects, with particular weight given to English and maths.

The Department for Education said the rise in under-performing schools is because of technical changes to the points system used by government statisticians to calculate a school's performance.

The rise comes amid major changes to England's exams system, including the introduction of a new grading system, which has meant the data includes English and maths GCSE results awarded new 9-1 grades while other subjects received traditional A*-G grades.

School leaders said the new grading system affecting English and maths has complicated the way school performance is calculated, as it has to be worked out using a combination of old and new grading systems.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: "As the DfE itself says in today's statistics, these changes are the main reason why there has been an increase in the number of schools which are deemed to be below the 'floor standard' for Progress 8.

Lewisham's entries include two schools serving the Brockley area:

  • Sedgehill School
  • Forest Hill School
  • Prendergast Ladywell School
  • Addey and Stanhope School
With thanks to Daniel for the tip-off.