ESC holds back GCSE results breakdown until January

Schools in England will publish their results imminently.

But Deputy Heidi Soulsby has been told to forget about obtaining detailed results for Guernsey schools until January.

‘I was surprised and disappointed by the response from the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture,’ she said over the weekend.

‘I completely understand that the GCSE results are provisional, but they have already provided the results by school in relation to maths and English combined.

‘The UK Government is publishing provisional results by school or college next week, so it is unclear why we have to wait until January to get the same information.’

Results published by ESC in August showed that about 55% of students at States schools achieved at least grade 4 – equivalent to the old grade C – in English language or literature and maths.

These were the island’s worst GCSE results since 2011, when a figure of 51% sparked a political crisis and an external review of Education.

The committee has already said that grades in English were much better than in maths and that an improvement programme was in place for maths.

Deputy Soulsby submitted rule 14 written questions asking for the results to be broken down by subject for each school.

ESC replied late on Friday telling her to wait a few more months.

Its reply did, however, state that across the island the percentage of students obtaining grade 4 or above was 70% in English language or literature and 58% in maths

‘The maths results are clearly disappointing. Including those who did not sit maths, only 54.1% of pupils obtained grade 4 or above,’ said Deputy Soulsby.

‘It’s good to see there is a plan to do something about it. However, the question is whether this is a general issue or more of a problem in certain schools.

‘I don’t know, but given the refusal to provide the school data it suggests it may well be the latter, but of course this can only be an assumption until the data is published.’

ESC president Andrea Dudley-Owen pointed out that the States’ freedom of information code allowed her committee to withhold more detailed results until next year and provided two reasons for not releasing them now.

‘First, the data has yet to be validated following the completion of the formal appeals process and it is the committee’s usual practice that the non-validated data is not shared publicly beyond that reported on results day,’ she said.

‘Second, validated data is published in the committee’s annual report in January, so as to allow time for the validated data to be shared and discussed with the committee and shared with each setting’s interim governing board for discussion at its autumn governance meeting, before the information is released more widely.’

ESC has praised results in English, which it said were comparable with the UK, but has expressed concern about results in maths.

Its replies to Deputy Soulsby’s rule 14 questions stated that 11% of students in States schools obtained grade 7 or above – equivalent to the old grade A – in maths compared to 18% in English.

‘Our education professionals are working hard to address the discrepancy between results in English and maths,’ said Deputy Dudley-Owen.