Inner-city schools outperforming rural peers, ONS data shows

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/19/inner-city-schools-outperform-rural-coastal

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The successful turnaround of many inner-city schools in recent years has been underscored by fresh official data that shows them pulling ahead of rural and coastal parts of England.

With most of London getting above-average exam results, including the boroughs of Hackney, Camden and Lambeth, swaths of Suffolk, Norfolk, Kent, and Cornwall are lagging behind.

The Office for National Statistics data allows comparison between and within local authorities, mapping a range of indicators from GCSE exam results and the proportion of youngsters achieving expected levels in reading, writing and maths by age 11, to the percentage of children classified as persistent truants.

Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford University, says that besides the wealth of an area, factors influencing state school performance include levels of immigration, the supply of young teachers, and the prevalence of private schools.

State school performance in Tower Hamlets, in the east end of London – one of the most economically deprived and racially mixed boroughs in England – has high levels of exam performance at GCSE level, an achievement Dorling puts down in part to the "immigrant factor": new arrivals to Britain who see education as the route to social mobility and "really push their kids to do well at school".

The map suggests that areas that are both economically deprived and where there are few newcomers – those which have an "immigration deficit", as Dorling puts it – often struggle: coastal towns and former mining communities in Yorkshire, for example.

Educational stasis in some of these areas led Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw to warn this week that white working class children were "consistently the lowest-performing group in the country".

The supply of teachers is also thought to be a factor. Some believe urban areas such as London attract a higher level of young, enthusiastic teachers.

The prevalence of private schools also plays a part: relatively wealthy areas such as Oxford, where according to Dorling 40% of pupils are educated privately, often leave the state sector deprived of "pushy parents" who can help raise standards.

A report by the Commons education committee this week also said that white British children from deprived areas appear to be less resilient to the effects of poverty than other ethnic groups, who perform better at school despite similar levels of deprivation.

The committee called on the government to examine incentives to attract accomplished teachers to work in areas with a high proportion of deprived white working-class pupils.