Data included in this topic cover very wide ranging issues including free school meals and general pupil and parental welfare issues. Many of the information items will be of particular interest to parents; for example there are parliamentary questions relating to home school clubs and press releases about healthy schools and the launch of anti bullying stategies. Three particular topics are highlighted below; school transport, free school meals and ethnic minorities.
Funding for school transport is included as part of LEAs’ standard spending assessments, but it is up to individual authorities as to how they spend the money. In reply to a recent parliamentary question (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010111/text/10111w12.htm#10111w12.html_sbhd6) the Government said that the total amount spent by LEAs on home to school transport in England in 1998-99, the latest year for which figures are available, was £444 million. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) has also supported individual local projects on safe routes to schools. It has funded a pilot programme of site-specific advice on school travel plans, will roll out a larger programme this spring (2001) and will help fund local school travel plan coordinators.
The proportion of children eligible for free school meals is used as an estimate of deprivation. It is a factor both in calculating the amount of money each local education authority receives from central government for running costs for education and in evaluating the achievement of one school in comparison with other similar schools. The Standard Spending Assessment is essentially the government's view of what is needed to be spent in order to provide a standard level of service in each local authority. The total number of children living in the LEA who are dependents of parents claiming Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance and being educated at LEA expense is one of the 'indicators' used to calculate the SSA.
Each year schools fill in the DfEE Annual Schools' Census (Form 7) including information on the total number of pupils they have 'known to be eligible for free school meals'. These data are compiled into official statistics (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/statistics/DB/VOL/v0192/). Schools can use official comparisons available from the Autumn package which is sent to schools each year. Benchmark data are included which compare their performance with that of schools with a similar percentage of children known to be eligible for free school meals (http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/performance/).
It is clear from the official figures (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/statistics/DB/VOL/v0192/) data that there are more pupils known to be eligible for free school meals than actually take the meals. Overall in primary schools 18.3% of pupils are eligible but only 15.0 % take them. In secondary schools the gap is wider in that 16.5% are eligible and only 11.6% have the meals.
When the parliamentary select committee in December 1999 reported on School Meals(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmeduemp/96/9602.htm) it agreed with UNISON and the Child Poverty Action Group that the Government should carry out research into the reasons for low take up of free school meals. It recommended that the research should study the attitudes of children and their parents to claiming their entitlement to free school meals.
In principle the Government accepted this recommendation and was concerned that 322,000 pupils who were known to be eligible for a free school lunch did not have a meal on the day when the statistics were collected in January 1999. The DfEE agreed to discuss with the Child Poverty Action Group the proposed scope of a study which it hoped would result in practical strategies which schools can employ to increase uptake of free school meals. A parliamentary answer (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmhansrd/vo000307/text/00307w05.htm#00307w05.html_sbhd1) in 2000 estimated that the cost of providing free school meals in England in the financial year 2000/2001 was over £300 million; and that extending free school meals to all children would be almost £2 billion. The DfEE said it had no current plans to extend eligibility for free school meals, which would require primary legislation. In nineteen English LEAs over a third of the children in schools are eligible for free school meals - Birmingham, Camden, City of London, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringay, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Knowsley, Lambeth, Lewisham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newham, Nottingham City, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmhansrd/vo000306/text/00306w07.htm#00306w07.html_sbhd0).
Figures for English primary schools and secondary schools (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/statistics/DB/VOL/v0192/) classify pupils of compulsory school age into 8 ethnic groups - not all pupils are classified. Figures are also classified regionally into the 10 English regions.
Analyses of achievement at GCSE of 16 year olds, including both England and Wales, (http://www.dfee.gov.uk/statistics/DB/SFR/s0230/index.html) show that all ethnic groups saw a rise in achievement of 5 or more GCSEs A* - C (or the equivalent at GNVQ) with the exception of Bangladeshi 16 year olds. The results of Black, Indian and other Asian groups showed improvements but the fall in achievement in Bangladeshi young people and the small rise for Pakistani young people meant that the gap in achievement between highest and lowest achieving ethnic groups widened between 1998 and 2000. In 1998, 61% of Asian (not Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi) 16 year olds achieved 5 A* - C grade GCSEs; this rose to 70% in 2000. In 1998, 29% of Pakistani 16 year olds and 33% of Bangladeshi 16 year olds achieved 5 A* - C grade GCSEs; in 2000 these percentages were both 30%. These compare with an overall achievement of 46% in 1998 and 49% in 2000.
In a recent parliamentary answer (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/vo001114/text/01114w02.htm#01114w02_sbhd2) the Government said it plans to enhance ethnic monitoring of pupils' progress to allow individual pupil-level achievement to be linked to ethnic group data to ensure better targeted support for groups at risk of poor attainment. This was in response to a report Educational Inequality: Mapping Race, Class and Gender, commissioned by Ofsted, which showed that African Caribbean pupils enter compulsory schooling as the highest achieving group but leave it as the group least likely to gain five high-grade GCSEs.
The Ofsted report, based on 1997 data, rightly draws attention to worrying evidence from a small number of local education authorities that the relative attainment of African Caribbean pupils worsens between the start and end of their compulsory schooling. However, it also shows that there have been absolute and relative overall improvements in their attainment at GCSE. The Government provides targeted finance for African Caribbean and other ethnic minority pupils through the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant. In 2001-02, the grant will support £153.5 million of local expenditure--an increase of 4.5 per cent.
May 2001
Back to Top Back to Social and Parental Data