What’s happening to Burngreave children?

The biggest spend of the Council in Burngreave is on education. It is one area of provision that can have life-changing effects. In July 2005 the Area Panel councillors assembled information about the educational progress of local children. So what does the data tell us?

There are more school age children living in Burngreave in 2005 than there were in 2002. Fewer of the children are white; more are of black/minority ethnic heritage. Children move in and out of Burngreave, but white children move more often then black/minority children. The educational ability of children staying in Burngreave at age 11 was slightly higher than those children who moved.

The teachers’ assessments of children at age 5 (the foundation stage) are quite low, and for black/minority children it’s lower than for black/minority children in the city. This could reflect the nature of pre-school provision in the past for young children; will SureStart and voluntary provision start to alter this?

At age 7, Burngreave pupils have lower attainment than elsewhere in the city. Most worryingly, the trend until 2004 was widening between Burngreave and the rest of the city. However, there is some evidence that black/minority ethnic children are improving at this age; last year, their results were better than white children’s results.

By the age of 11, the evidence seems to be quite different. The gap between local children’s performance and the rest of the city is narrowing. Burngreave pupils of Pakistani heritage have better results than their peers in Darnall or Sharrow. The girls are more successful than boys, and this difference is similar in Burngreave to that of the rest of the city.

As children move to secondary schools, more are choosing local schools. Since 2003 over half of all children from the four local junior schools have gone to Fir Vale. Parkwood has traditionally been the catchment school for Pye Bank and now has increasing numbers of pupils from other local primaries.

Students are assessed half way through secondary school. The results in Burngreave still lag behind the rest of the city, but again the gap is narrowing. Black/minority ethnic girls are doing much better than boys; the ‘gap’ in performance between white girls and boys is much less than for Asian, African and African-Caribbean/dual heritage students.

By 16, the gap between girls and boys is even greater. However, Burngreave performance is much more similar to the rest of the city than at any earlier age. And the trend over the last three years is for continuing progress. Black/minority ethnic students – especially girls – performed much better than their peers in Darnall or Sharrow. White students’ performance fluctuates from year to year; minority ethnic achievement appears to be strengthening. Interestingly, the student support programmes in Burngreave have traditionally been open to minority ethnic students.

Of real interest is that in 2004, the GCSE results of Burngreave students educated in schools on the other side of town were no better than the results of students who attended the local secondaries. There should be more information from this year’s results to see if this is consolidated.

A-level results in 2004 were lower for both white and minority ethnic students. This might reflect the fact that students attending Sheffield College are entered for fewer exams than those attending the 6th forms on the other side of town. It will be good to know how Longley Park 6th Form College might alter this.

Statistics can illustrate what’s happened, but they can’t explain why. So the second stage of this process is to test out why things are happening and how improvements can be made; I’ll report back on this later in the year.