‘Depressing' picture presented on schools' performance across Central Bedfordshire

For youngsters in deprivation at key stage two and four, the local authority is “literally the bottom in the country”, Central Bedfordshire Council’s children’s services overview and scrutiny committee was told.

The picture is one of worsening and widening gaps between CBC attainment performance and national, as children progress through primary, warned a report to the committee.

Executive member for children and families and Independent Flitwick councillor Gareth Mackey acknowledged: “The data shows attainment remains a significant challenge to us, particularly at key stage two where performance is well below national and statistical neighbours.

“Overall outcomes remain below expectations. Disadvantage is the most significant factor affecting performance, with persistent gaps for pupils eligible for free school meals and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

“Addressing this gap is the central focus of our improvement work. We’re strengthening collaboration with schools’ trusts and the Department for Education (DfE) to ensure a more aligned system-wide approach to improving outcomes, shared ownership and challenge across partners.

“We’re prioritising improvements in teaching curriculum quality. There’s also a focus on early intervention, attendance and targeted support for schools where outcomes are weakest. This represents a coordinated response to raise attainment, especially for our disadvantaged pupils.”

CBC’s head of education and inclusion Claire Mosseveld explained: “Apart from key stage five technical qualifications, all of our national measures are below average.

“We’re most concerned about our key stage two cohort. We’ve collaboration with headteachers and the DfE and the government regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) team to raise attainment.

“We’re developing a strategy and have called the group the education, leadership and improvement partnership. That’s had a positive impact so far. There’s a real tidal wave of all our leaders collectively wanting to work together with us, which we haven’t had for a long time.”

Conservative Cranfield and Marston Moretaine councillor, Sue Clark, said: “If you look at early years we’re below national, but at least we’re in touching distance.

“We get to key stage two and we’ve fallen off a cliff. There’s one thing which distinguishes us from all other local authorities and it’s structural.

“We’ve too many schools still in a three-tier system, instead of two-tier. That’s the single most important thing we have to address.”

Conservative Flitwick councillor, Ian Adams, said: “Deprivation exists elsewhere, yet our free school meals children are doing worse and have been for some time.

“It’s depressing to continue to see how bad still is our key stage two for reading, writing and Maths. It must be systemic. Big things need to happen surely to change this picture.

“We’ve got the conclusions and next steps, but none of them seem to say that much or it’s hard to interpret. Key stage four has improved, but it’s still below the national average by quite a distance and that’s depressing as well.”

CBC’s service director education and SEND Dan Newbolt replied: “It’s structural to some degree, but also practise.

“That’s why, with the work of the DfE and other colleagues, we’re creating pillars of areas of improvement from data to curriculum through to leadership to make that progress.

“Switching from three- to two-tier is part of that. Schools aren’t saying ‘if we solved children with deprivation attainment would be better’.

“But we’re literally the bottom in the country, if you’re deprived in Central Bedfordshire at key stage two and four. It’s more complicated here because of where the deprivation is, so it’s a focus.”