Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

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Daogroupie
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Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:01 pm
Location: Herts

Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

Post by Daogroupie »

Pupils who speak English as a second language are now outperforming native speakers at GCSEs , official figures show.

Data released today by the Department for Education (DfE) shows that children who grow up speaking a language other than English now have a higher attainment score than their native-speaking peers by the time they are 16.

The figures also showed that rising numbers of secondary schools are considered under-performing, meaning they fall below the “floor standard”.

One in eight of England's mainstream secondaries - 365 in total - fell below the government's minimum standards in 2017.This is up from 282 schools, just under one in 10 - the year before.


The DfE suggested that 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.

In previous years, schools have been ranked according to the proportion of pupils achieving at least five grade A* to Cs at GCSE, including English and maths.

This measure was scrapped last year in favour of Attainment 8, with a score based on eight GCSE subjects, with a double weighting given to english and maths.

This year, the average Attainment 8 score of children who speak English as a second language was 46.8, compared to 46.3 for native speakers.

Meanwhile, the previous year native speakers were narrowly ahead, with an average score of 50.0 compared to 49.9 for non-native speakers.

Last year was also the first time that schools were measured for progress as well as attainment. Progress 8, which measures progress of each pupil from the end of primary school up to GCSEs.

It compares pupils' results with the achievements of other pupils that have the same prior attainment and measures performance across eight "core" qualifications.

Both this year and last, children with English as a second language made better progress on average than native speakers, although this year the gap widened between the two.

The data, which covers every secondary in England, shows that London has the lowest proportion of under-performing schools while the North East had the highest.

DG
Amber
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Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:59 am

Re: Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

Post by Amber »

Is this post a direct quote from a newspaper or other publication, DG?
caficom
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Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2017 11:59 pm

Re: Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

Post by caficom »

"English as a second language" might be a bit misleading. I wonder on what basis the decision is made what the child's first or second language is. Just because the parents speak English as a second language, and the kids grow up multilingual, does not mean English is necessarily the child's second language.
Our child grows up with three languages (German, Farsi and English), but although we speak mainly German at home our child's first and strongest language is and always was definitely English. He did well in his 11plus recently and got a certain place in a good school (DAO), with good CEM and English results. Does this mean he outperformed native English speakers? Not necessarily, as we always considered him to be a native English speaker who corrects our funny accents.
Daogroupie
Posts: 11099
Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:01 pm
Location: Herts

Re: Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

Post by Daogroupie »

He is a native English speaker. As you say in your post "Our child's first and strongest language is and always was definitely English" DG
berks_mum
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Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2013 4:52 pm

Re: Native English speakers overtaken at GCSE's

Post by berks_mum »

I think if a child is born in the UK and starts school from reception in the UK then by the child reaches GCSE the language disadvantage shouldn't count much. The child will be communicating in English with teachers, friends and others. Watching TV in English, reading books in English and if the parents are professionals working in the UK e.g. doctors, engineers, scientists or any other highly skilled migrants then they probably have some knowledge of English to help the child.
My own experience is my DC started school in Year 1, did not know how the read, write(not even the clock) and had not heard any English till then. Her primary school advised us to keep talking in our languages but may be they panicked in Year 2 when it was time for SATs. DD left left Year one with 1C. They allocated a special teacher to give her a boost in English and Maths. But in the summer of year 1 she got interested in the picture books so a tiny bit of language started developing. She left year 2 with level 3 in Maths and 2a in English. Moving forward we thought she is good at Maths but will do badly in English at 11 plus so we decided to send her for coaching. Later on, when I looked at the 11plus results spreadsheet I saw that it was a strong English score that gave her an entry to the Grammar school she is in. If CEM was not English heavy she would have missed it.
Also, third generation migrants should have a similar exposure to English language as native speakers ?
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