CHILDREN who are unlikely to achieve good GCSE results should be identified from the age of 11 under new plans to help raise education standards.
MP Andrew Percy, a former secondary school teacher, is backing proposals to identify and support at-risk schoolchildren from an early age in order to prevent them becoming Neets (Not in education, employment or training).
If the plans were to receive Government support, every secondary school in Yorkshire and the Humber would be required to publish data sets showing pupils "at risk of educational disadvantage", in order to identify individuals in need of early intervention.
MPs were told that this would not require a child to be from a family on benefits or a low income in line with other educational support measures.
The plans – an idea by Mr Percy's Conservative colleague and Downing Street adviser Chris Skidmore, MP for Kingswood, near Bristol – come amid concerns that a disproportionately high number of school leavers end their secondary studies with poor grades, with more than four in ten teenagers failing to gain at least five A* to Cs at GCSE last summer.
In Hull, 50 per cent of pupils achieved the GCSE gold standard of five A*to C grades, including English and maths, while the 61 per cent figure seen in East Riding – just above the national average of 60.6 per cent – was the area's best performance to date.
But even here the picture is mixed, with the number of Neets in Hull last year standing at almost twice the national average at 10.3 per cent of young people aged 16 to 18.
While Hull City Council has since worked at bringing the figure down to 5.7 per cent, only slightly above the national average of 5.3 per cent, educators say there is no room for complacency.
Mr Percy said: "We know that the earlier educational underachievement is identified, the more likely we are to put that right.
"Teachers work incredibly hard already but requiring schools to publish this data and set proper strategies to tackle those at risk of failure is another way of ensuring our schools intervene early to address concerns.
"International league tables have shown UK standards falling compared with other countries. Life chances are so affected by educational underachievement, as is the economic future of the country.
"We need to do more to intervene early to give young people the best of life chances."
About 120,000 children born since 2000 are at risk of becoming Neets as they are under-performing at Key Stage tests and not mastering the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Children who fall into the newly created category would be given personalised teaching support, along the lines of assistance given to pupils with special educational needs or those whose mother tongues are not English.
Introducing his "Pupils at Risk of Educational Disadvantage" Bill via a ten-minute rule motion in the Commons, Mr Skidmore said: "Just 8 per cent of pupils who fail to obtain level 4 at Key Stage 2 tests will go on to achieve five good GCSEs five years later.
"At Level 3 Stage 2 maths, just 13 per cent of pupils will go on to obtain a grade C at maths GCSE.
"More worryingly, 40 per cent of pupils who obtained Level 4 maths in Key Stage 2 do not go on to achieve a grade C five years later."
The Bill's Second Reading is scheduled for Thursday, but will only make further progress if the Government gives it its full backing.
