Great rise in Southend primary school pupils achieving SAT’s benchmark

September 14, 2014 by Joanna Harrison

A record number of Year 6 Southend pupils have achieved the expected level of reading, writing and maths in state funded primary schools, catapulting the area from 105th place in 2013 to 32nd in 2014.

Data released by the Department for Education shows 80 per cent of 11-year-olds achieved level 4 or higher in their SATs tests in the three subjects in 2014 – a 6 percentage point rise from the 74 per cent achieving the benchmark in 2013.

The Southend figure also stands above the national average for state-funded schools, which climbed from 76 per cent in 2013 to 78 per cent in 2014.

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is now in the top 25% of all local authorities for the proportion of 11-year-olds achieving level 4 or more in reading, writing and maths.

Cllr Anne Jones, executive councillor for children and learning, says: “These are magnificent figures and thanks to the hard work of everyone involved from the teachers and staff to council officers who have shown such strong leadership in this area. “This is about getting the basics right and as a council we are showing great attention to detail. We have boosted attendance at all levels through a number of initiatives and programmes and things like that have had a positive impact on these results. This is combined with our continued drive to improve our local schools and make them rated good or better.”

Other headline figures in Southend include:
•Southend continues to match or exceed the performance of the Eastern region in all key KS2 measures.
•With regards to statistical neighbours (local authority areas with similar contexts), Southend surpasses their average performance in terms of all pupils achievement indicators.
•Southend is above the national benchmarks for all secondary ready measures of performance.
•Based on rankings out of 11 local authorities (when compared to statistical neighbours and Eastern region), Southend sees rankings of 4th or higher in all of the key attainment measures.

visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-curriculum-assessments-at-key-stage-2-in-england-2014