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North East primaries improve performance in league tables

Revised Key Stage 2 performance figures released yesterday show continued improvement in the North East – though gender gaps have widened.

The percentage of pupils meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics rose from 65% last year to 67% this year in the North East. This is higher than the English average, which rose from 61% to 64%.

The attainment gap in favour of girls continues to widen however, rising from a 7% difference in 2017 to a 9% difference in 2018 in the North East. Similar gaps can be seen across the country.

Looking at pupils working at the higher standard, girls also outperformed boys in every subject other than Maths. Maths at the higher standard appears to be the only area where boys outperformed girls; at the expected standard girls still outperformed or equalled boys across most of the country.

Researchers have previously noted that problems with boys’ literacy appear in every country for which we have figures and across all outcome groups. That they occur across very different cultures and education systems suggests the gaps we see are unlikely to be due to anything specific to the English context.

Percentage of pupils reaching a higher standard at Key Stage 2 by gender 2017-18

The improvement in KS2 results in the North East, which has been evident for the last five years, also has potential implications for KS4 performance measures. As the Government’s preferred Progress 8 measure tracks progress from KS2 to KS4, we will see a decline in Progress 8 scores unless KS4 results also rise.

View the full datasets here.