The 20th anniversary of the far-reaching 1988 Education Reform Act, which was commemorated this week, seems an appropriate moment for a pause for reflection on where we should be heading with schooling.

The Act, which introduced the national curriculum and its associated school tests in England and Wales, was a pivotal moment. Central government took unprecedented powers to decide what and how children should learn.

Ever since getting their hands on the levers of control, successive governments have never relaxed their grip.

But do we still need a national curriculum? And why are schools still based on a 19th century model when we are now several years into the 21st century?

As it happens, these were also the questions aired at a gathering of education experts I attended recently in the unlikely setting of the north tower of London’s Tower Bridge.

The event was part of Horizontal - it stands for ‘horizon scanning: technology and learning’ - a futurology project funded by the Department for Children Schools and Families and organised by Professor Stephen Heppell.

Bridge to the future

The issues it set out to address - what shape education should take in the future - are as relevant to England and Wales, and the rest of the UK, as they are to both advanced and developing nations around the world.

The setting was inspirational and apt. We were inside Tower Bridge, high above the river Thames at the heart of London, with road and river traffic teeming far below.

It was inspirational because it offered new perspectives on familiar and traditional objects.

It was apt because when Tower Bridge was designed it was an example of an innovative solution to a long-term problem: how to keep London’s increasingly busy road traffic moving without disrupting a busy river port.

The experts came from all over the world. They were educators and economists, teachers and administrators, bankers and entrepreneurs. Some inhabited the world of centralised, tax-funded government provision. Others belonged to the voluntary sector. Yet others were active in the for-profit world of private enterprise.

Discussion focussed around why schooling had failed to change radically when so many other spheres of life had been transformed.

As Professor Heppell noted there was a time when every country aspired to have a national airline in much the same way as they felt the need for a national curriculum.

Globalisation

Now most have accepted there is no need for a government-owned, nationally branded airline. Why then do we still feel the need for our own distinctive national curriculum rather than taking a ‘pick ‘n mix’ selection from the best bits of curricula around the world?

As Professor Heppell noted, modern economies do not try to do everything any more. There are just a handful of countries that continue with car-making, or try to excel at film-making. The rest import cars and films from those places acknowledged as the world’s best.

So why don’t we do the same in education. If a country, Finland for example, has found a schooling model that consistently leads the world, why don’t we import it either wholesale or at least in parts?

Or, more radically, if a private school chain from Sweden or the USA has developed an effective model why don’t governments hire them rather than persisting with their own failing models?

Is providing charitable donations of second-hand computers to schools in the developing world really the best way to stimulate education reform? Or should governments offer contracts to the private sector to make investments in the country’s educational infrastructure in return for a long-term payback as a more educated and prosperous nation starts to buy its products?

These are, of course, controversial questions. They raise ethical issues. They rarely prompt easy answers. But it does seem right to be asking them.

User-generated learning

As Professor Heppell pointed out other sectors have been transformed by technological change. Take broadcasting, for example.

Two decades ago, or even less, it was nice and simple: the broadcasters made programmes for the audience. No one strayed much over the dividing line.

Now not only do the established broadcasters appeal for, and broadcast, ‘user generated content’, but they are losing out to the likes of You Tube where users provide their own material.

Or, closer to the world of learning, look at what has happened with encyclopaedias. Once families saved up to fill a whole shelf at home with several volumes. Then these were condensed onto a single CD-Rom for a smaller price. Now it is all free online and - with Wikipedia - you can even add your own entries.

So why has this not happened with schools? Why, despite the rhetoric about personalised learning, do we still have national curricula and national testing?

Why, for that matter, are schoolrooms still much the same in terms of size, shape and focus as they were 150 years ago when mass education began in Britain and learning methods were so different?

Political grip

One answer to emerge from the event was that, unlike many industries, education is still firmly in the grip of governments.

The consensus was that governments are generally not very good at innovation or risk-taking. Nor do they tend to take the long view (the sponsoring of this event by the DCSF being a notable exception) as they work to four or five year cycles.

Where new technologies have been used they tend to reinforce existing teaching and learning methods rather than taking us off in new directions.

The model for schooling still very often involves gathering large numbers of children together into a single building, dividing them into groups by age, and placing an adult with some textbooks in front of them.

Yet the evidence around us shows that young people, and increasingly adults too, learn from their peers. If they want to find something out they go on the web, searching for a user group or search engine, rather than asking a nearby figure of authority.

Of course, there are problems with this. You can get the wrong, or false, answers. You can fail to understand the information or its context. But shouldn’t we take more note of how young people learn? When they get a new mobile phone or computer, they never read the manual. They learn by doing or by asking their peers in online communities.

This may not work for all young people but it can be great for those who find conventional schooling unbearable.

Take the ‘Not School’ initiative that has had great success with pupils who have been excluded from school. Instead of putting them all together in a special unit, it created a virtual school, where pupils learned from home, interacting over the Internet.

So, 20 years on, is the Education Reform Act still the right approach? Or is it time we broke out of a 19th century model of the teacher at the front of each class, delivering a prescribed curriculum, and constrained by regular pencil and paper national tests?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I’d be interested to hear yours. It’s something to contemplate over the summer school holidays.

By Mike Baker

The American firm at the centre of this summer’s exams fiasco for national curriculum tests has lost its five-year contract to mark the papers.

ETS Europe, which failed to deliver the results on time, has also agreed to repay £19.5m to the Qualification and Curriculum Authority, the tests watchdog, as a result of the chaos. In addition, it will cancel invoices and further charges of £4.6m to the watchdog.

The decision to dissolve the firm’s five-year contract was welcomed by teachers’ leaders. However, the firm is still expected to receive £15m, as the first year of its contract was worth £39m.

Last night there were no clues as to who would be administering next year’s tests, with the QCA saying that details would be announced in the autumn.

Two of the biggest exam boards, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) and the Oxford and Cambridge and Royal Society of Art (OCR), have said they want nothing to do with the contract.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "This is very welcome news and many schools who have still not received complete results will undoubtedly feel some sense of vindication."

However, he added: "The testing and examination system is sinking under its own weight and it is time for the Government to examine seriously how it can streamline the assessment regime and again make it fit for purpose."

Many teachers’ leaders – backed by the Liberal Democrats – have argued that the Government should scrap the tests for 14-year-olds to ease the pressure on the system. Annette Brooke, Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, said: "I hope that instead of finding another company to mark future key stage three test papers [for 14-year-olds] the Government will scrap these expensive and unnecessary tests altogether."

She added: "ETS demonstrated pure incompetence when it came to marking this year’s tests. Many children are still waiting for their results which are now nearly six weeks late. Ministers must confirm that ETS will not receive a single penny for the fiasco."

Dr Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA, said: "ETS Europe was selected due to the strength of their worldwide experience in delivering large-scale assessments. "

Zoubir Yazid, managing director of ETS Global BV, the parent company, said: "ETS Europe has apologised to schools for the delays in marking national curriculum assessments in England." He added that the quality of this year’s marking had nevertheless been high.

Yesterday the QCA confirmed some scripts were still missing six weeks after the deadline for marking – 98.9 per cent of the tests had been delivered and 95.2 per cent of those for 14-year-olds. The Schools minister, Jim Knight, said: "I am very pleased that the contract has now been terminated. It is disappointing that the issues with this year’s national curriculum test results have meant that the partnership between QCA and ETS must end early."

By Richard Garner
Saturday, 16 August 2008

School inspectors are writing to children as young as four, telling them they may fail in adult life because their teachers are not up to scratch.

In one letter sent to pupils at a Nottinghamshire primary, the inspector who visited the school wrote: "You are not reaching the standards you should in English, mathematics and science, and this means you are not well prepared for your future adult lives. Some of the teaching you receive is too slow and you spend too much time listening to the teacher instead of practising the skills you are learning, through exciting, purposeful activities."

It concluded: "Your headteacher needs to be clear about what the school does well and what needs to be improved, so that the correct action can be taken to put things right."

In another letter, children at a London school were informed: "Unfortunately, we found that your school is not as good as it used to be, or as it should be now."

The decision by Ofsted to revamp inspections and send letters to both parents and pupils, outlining its verdicts, provoked controversy when it was introduced three years ago. And now that the content of the letters has been seen by teachers’ leaders, calls to scrap the idea have been renewed.

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NationalAssociation of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said they were "ridiculous, unnecessary and ill-conceived". She went on: "To cater for their target audience, these letters often oversimplify the outcomes of inspection and in doing so misrepresent the findings. The letters in effect give licence to pupils to question the professionalism of the school and its staff. They should be scrapped."

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent-Teacher Associations, said the letters were "uhelpful and can just make some precocious children even more precocious".

However, an Ofsted survey found that 70 per cent of headteachers were happy with post-inspection letters being sent to pupils, although some did suggest that the language used could be more appropriate for its target audience.

A spokeswoman for Ofsted said: "Where schools involve pupils in sharing the key messages of the letter sensitively and openly, they are a valuable tool in engaging pupils in both the inspection and subsequent school improvement."

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Saturday, 16 August 2008

News Source - Telegraph.co.uk

This summer, as soon as the school holidays began, Maxie and Martin Brown, their two children, nanny and housekeeper headed to the same villa in northern Ibiza they have hired for the past five years. A notable characteristic of the £3,650-a-week retreat, shaded by palms and orange trees, is that it has a self-contained three-bedroomed cottage where the children and staff stay. This is not, after all, an ordinary ‘family’ holiday. On the contrary: while the children build castles in the sand of nearby beaches, Mr and Mrs Brown have been sleeping off a string of private parties at villas and on yachts dotted around the island.

The Browns are members of a breed of glamorous, high net-worth individuals who appear the perfect parents. They send their children to the best primary schools, bring them up to mind their p’s and q’s, drive them to ballet lessons and dress them in Bonpoint. Yet there is one aspect of their approach to parenting that many will find profoundly shocking. Because once the children are tucked up in bed, the Browns will start some serious partying, not with a bottle of wine or two, but with class-A drugs.

As the trend for having children later in life continues, some parents are finding it more difficult to abandon the carefree debauchery of their youth. They refuse to jettison their previous life of cocktails, parties and powdered drugs just because they have entered their late thirties and early forties and taken on the responsibilities of school fees and sleepovers. These parents see no reason for their newly responsible status to cramp the irresponsible behaviour they have long enjoyed. That, their reasoning goes, is why you hire a nanny.

Drug-taking among the super-rich is, of course, nothing new. One appalled nanny confided that, while working for an A-list celebrity couple, she had to wipe the cocaine off the glass-topped kitchen table most mornings before giving the children breakfast. But a mark of how far society has shifted is that the ‘coke and kids’ approach to parenting has now become acceptable for the middle classes, too. Shocking as it may seem, it is now commonplace in smart London postcodes for parents to serve the ‘fourth course’ at a dinner party while the children sleep upstairs. Even those without the 24-hour nanny and separate accommodation see it as a way to save on the baby-sitting and bring the party to them instead. In these circles cocaine is as popular as champagne, and the two often go hand-in-hand. It makes an appearance at weddings, weekends in the country pile and even christenings and children’s birthday parties. Even when a report on cocaine use in Europe put Britain in first place, there was a collective shrug of shoulders. In fact, cocaine is now such a feature of middle-class social life that, on his first day as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Iain Blair remarked: ‘People are having dinner parties where they drink less wine and snort more cocaine.’ A few days later he added that these were the same people who ‘wouldn’t dream of having non-organic vegetables’.

With their weekly delivery of an organic groceries box from Abel & Cole, Blair may well have been describing the Browns. Martin, 42 (not his real name for obvious reasons), is in the music industry and Maxie, 36, a former model, has a few ‘projects’ in fashion. They are reaping the financial rewards of careers built in their twenties and early thirties. No one in their milieu bats an eyelid at their behaviour - mostly because so many of them are doing the same thing.

‘My husband works hard and we deserve to let our hair down,’ says Maxie. She adds that their drug-taking is contained and ‘very discreet’. ‘We do spend time with the children on holiday, but I’m not big on the beach or the pool. The children are enjoying one sort of break and we enjoy going out with friends. It’s about balance. Look at all those frazzled mothers who never get out of the house - can you imagine a pressure-cooker like that? But nor are we "absent parents" - we are around if they need us. I reject the idea that being able to have a good time means that you are not a good parent. We’re not addicts.’

Maxie believes that the current trend for continuing to ‘party’ (a verb now used to denote all manner of questionable behaviour) as your children grow up is no different from what went on in previous generations. Many children of the 1970s remember being put to bed alongside the coat pile at a cocktail party, and then being driven home without seatbelts by a parent who has perhaps drunk a tad more than the requisite glass of wine. ‘Our parents were so much more reckless,’ says Clare Jones, 38, who works in fashion and lives in north Kensington with her husband and two daughters. ‘We were left to play unsupervised while they enjoyed long boozy lunches and smoked Rothmans. I self-consciously protect my kids - they’re safe and asleep when I party. At worst, they see me with a bad hangover. If they wake up in the night and I settle them back to bed a bit tipsy and high… Well, they see mummy in a good mood.’

On the morning that she speaks to me, Jones has slept in while the au pair walked the children to their private school, via a local café where they ate breakfast. She lives in an area popular with media people (it’s close to the BBC), politicians (David Cameron lives a few streets away), writers, actors and musicians. Front doors are painted in Farrow & Ball colours and the gardens are tastefully tended. It screams middle class. But the modern kitchen of Jones’s Edwardian house is still scattered with the debris of last night’s dinner party. On the sideboard, ready for the dishwasher, are lipstick-stained red-wine glasses. The cleaner is scraping the contents of eight untouched pudding bowls into the bin. On the table, next to overflowing ashtrays, is subtle evidence of the post-main course debauchery: two CDs covered in specks of white powder. Jones says this is not a regular event. ‘Maybe twice a month. I have a rule - I’m always in bed with a Valium and a camomile tea by three o’clock. I’d say 65 to 70 per cent of the people I know still have an occasional dabble even though they have children,’ she says. ‘The biggest laugh I had was when I went to an evening do related to the children’s school and saw two other mothers going into a cubicle in the ladies together to do coke. Yes, I feel rough afterwards, but it’s harmless fun.’

But despite Jones’ insistence, there is a darker side to the partying-mums set. Sarah Lewis, 32, who lives in Notting Hill with her partner, says that the wake-up call came for her when her daughter was four months old. ‘All my friends with children partied. I used to think, "Well done them for not letting kids change their lives." I’ve been to so many parties where children were taken along too and I didn’t think anything of it.’ One such event was a party in a stately home, owned by a famously eccentric family. ‘It was about six o’clock in the morning and everyone was trashed. There were kids everywhere, some of them asleep on sofas, some on the floor. You stepped over the sleeping kids like you would a sleeping dog. I went into the dining-room and people were taking coke off the table in front of my friend’s little girl, who was just sitting in the middle of it all wide-eyed with this innocent little face. I think the people there were so off it they saw her as a form of entertainment.’

Lewis reels off a few names of guests - all would be at home in the social pages of Tatler. ‘You have to understand that a lot of these people are self-consciously Bohemian,’ she says. ‘They have certain rules - for example they might smoke cannabis all through their pregnancy but insist on a "drug-free" birth. Then they’d be back caning it a month later.’

Having arranged for her daughter to stay with her parents for the weekend, Lewis recently went to a wedding in Dorset: ‘They’d set up a dancefloor outside, surrounded by hay bales and lit by torches. It looked pretty, but it was quite dark. It was about one or two in the morning and I went for a dance. As I climbed over a hay bale, I stumbled across a baby who had been left in a Moses basket on the ground. He was screaming his head off but no one heard him because the sound system was so loud. I picked him up and was jiggling him around for a good half hour before his mother came to check on him. She was off her head and totally ungrateful for the help. Anything could have happened: someone could’ve stepped on him; a hay bale could have caught fire.’

Lewis believes that there is now a pressure on parents to stay young for longer, and that means never wanting to come across as too sensible or ’square’. ‘The sad thing is that we are all so bloody liberal these days; to criticise is really uncool, so no one does. It seems to me the difference between them and the children of drug addicts on a council estate is only about a million quid.’

News Source - Telegraph.co.uk

The general public is over-concerned by the problem of bullying in England’s schools, research suggests.

Some 80% of people surveyed for the Department for Children, Schools and Families thought it was a big problem.

However, 84% of parents and 75% of young people aged 10 to 19 did not think it a problem; 60% of youngsters saying the situation was improving.

Researchers interviewed 3,000 children, parents and members of the general public on growing up in England.

As a rule, young people and parents were more positive about growing up in England than the general public.

Achievement gap

But the majority of all three groups said they felt England was a good country to grow up in, with 90% of young people, 74% of parents and 71% of the general public agreeing with the statement.

And a high proportion of young people (83%) felt schools and colleges prepared them very or quite well for working life.

This compared with 57% of parents and 53% of the general public.

There was also a difference between the views of all three audiences on the quality of publicly-funded education.

Across all three groups, secondary schools were not rated as highly as primary schools and nurseries.

But the majority of all groups - 66% of general public, 74% of parents and 88% of young people - rated secondary schools as good.

More facilities

Both adults and young people agreed that disadvantaged youngsters faced greater hurdles than their richer peers.

Some 80% of parents and the general public said it was more difficult for low income students to go to university. And 74% of young people felt the same.

England’s Schools Secretary Ed Balls said he was pleased so many children, young people and parents were positive about England being a good country in which to grow up.

"But we still haven’t reached our aim of becoming the best in the world.

"In the Children’s Plan we set out how we can do that with investment in play and youth activities and by making sure young people have excellent education and are put on the path to success."

It was vital that the government listen to parents, young people and children’s views as it made policy, he added.

Last year a report for children’s charity Unesco placed the UK at the bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries.

The report was based on 40 indicators including poverty, family relationships, and health from the years 2000-03.

Plans to ensure parents in England get sent data on their child’s height and weight have been criticised as flawed and lacking bite.

The Department of Health has urged all Primary Care Trusts to send out the data collected at schools without waiting for parents to request it.

But Tam Fry, an obesity expert, said parents would not receive the most useful information on body mass index.

He also criticised reluctance to use the term "obese" in letters.

Ministers believe the letters could help raise parents’ awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle for their children.

But announcing the move on Monday, they said research had shown using the term "obese" risked alienating parents, and turning them off from the key message.

Instead, they have advised primary care trusts to refer to obese children as "very overweight".

The National Child Measurement Programme weighs and measures the height of all primary school children in reception class (aged four to five) and year six (aged 10-11).

It is not compulsory, but most children in England do now take part.

No stigma

Ivan Lewis, Health Minister, said research had shown that parents wanted to know their child’s results, with the information presented in a clear and non-stigmatising way.

He said: "Research shows that most parents of overweight or obese children think that their child is a healthy weight.

"This move isn’t about pointing the finger and telling parents that their children are overweight, instead it is about equipping parents with the information they need to help their children live healthier lives."

However, Mr Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, criticised the reluctance to use hard-hitting language.

He said: "I find this whole approach from the Department of Health a bit prissy and namby pamby.

"The Americans have gone back to using the term because it’s the kind of shock word that makes parents sit up and take notice."

Vague scale

Mr Fry also said the sliding scale with which parents would be provided to assess their child’s weight was no substitute for BMI.

He said: "The Department of Health admits in its guidance that BMI is the best and most practical way to assess whether a child is overweight or obese, but then denies parents the actual figures for their children because they say it could be confusing for some.

"That is total rubbish."

Mr Fry said he had tested the scale which will be provided, and found it vague, and inaccurate.

A Department of Health spokesperson said the sliding scale had received positive feedback from parents during tests.

"Some parents may find the BMI growth charts confusing and may need someone to explain what they show.

"We want parents to easily understand the results without the need for further explanation, and that is why the sliding scale bar will be used."

Move welcomed

Caroline Butler, of the charity Diabetes UK, welcomed the government’s move.

She said: "Parents need to be educated about the dangers of obesity and obesity-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes."

"Ten years ago Type 2 diabetes in children was unheard of in the UK. Now we have over 1,000 children with the condition, some as young as seven.

So far, around 40% of primary care trusts have already said they intend to send out the information automatically in the next school year.

A further 40% said they would wait for the Department of Health guidance before making a decision.

The scheme, introduced three years ago, got off to a slow start, but 80% of children in reception year and year six were weighed and measured in 2006-07.

Of those, 22.9% of children in reception year and 31.6% of those in year six were overweight or obese.

No parent wants their child to be the one left out in the playground - waiting on the sidelines for an invite to join in.

But many may not realise that being very shy can also mean they miss out on learning too.

According to the National Education Trust, some children are not benefitting fully from school because they lack the confidence to put up their hands in class.

It is offering to train schools so they can run their own emotional support programme which helps children develop the resilience and confidence to participate.

Six and seven-year-olds chosen for the scheme are taken out of their class groups for a 45-minute session once a week for six weeks.

Angela Jackson, who trains teaching assistants to run the sessions, says they are not aimed at the child who is already seeing an educational psychologist or the one with a recognised learning difficulty.

"Instead, it’s designed for the child that is sitting in the classroom and not attracting much attention," she says.

"They may have had something happen outside of school - maybe they have moved home or maybe there is a new baby in the family.

"Or they might just be a bit shy or have difficulty forming relationships."

Mrs Jackson says there is nothing wrong with being quiet, it is just important that children are able to participate.

"They may be a perfectly happy child, but if they do not have the confidence to put their hands up and ask questions they are not going to get the full benefit from all that’s going on around them," she adds.

Richard Lee, head teacher of Barford Primary School in Ladywood, Birmingham, said he decided to try the scheme because he had a year group of children with a lot of interesting characters.

‘Clamming up’

"We thought this would be useful for them because it’s all about social interaction and how to relate to their peers and adults.

"We chose a selection of children who weren’t necessarily the most difficult or challenging but would benefit from raising their self-esteem.

"They might have been classed as your classic wall flowers, or they were stigmatised by a certain type of behaviour.

"They didn’t know that they were being treated any different but they were all taken out of class on a regular basis.

"They all thoroughly enjoyed it and we saw quite a change throughout the period that we ran the sessions."

Mr Lee described one child who was very, very shy and had a tendency to clam up.

"He had a lot to say but he just couldn’t get it out in an acceptable manner. He would get it all mixed up in his head and stutter a lot.

"By the end of the programme, he was the child who could have a full 10 or 20 minute conversation with the rest of a group."

Another child, Mr Lee recalled, lacked the social skills to interact in class properly.

Fear of ridicule

"He wasn’t malicious, he was a bit over-enthusiastic, and didn’t take his turn to speak.

"By the end, he could wait and listen and respect other people’s points of view."

And it is not just the children’s ability to participate and play by the class rules that improved, they have also shown improvements in their ability to organise themselves and learn in a group effectively.

The 6s and 7s programme is all about helping children with their social and emotional development so they can make friends and participate in class.

And by all accounts it seems to work.

In another school, a year group was assessed for their suitability for the programme against a range of skills and characteristics.

Those with scores in the middle range were picked for the special classes.

By the end of the programme, half of those who had been on it had upped their scores to the maximum scores recorded by the year group as a whole.

Mr Lee concludes: "We are in an inner city school in an area of Birmingham which is pretty deprived.

"The children are wonderful but they may not necessarily have all the acceptable manners.

"I’ve always said you can have the most wonderful teacher, but if they can’t manage the class and there isn’t that social relationship between the children, then the children won’t learn.

"You have to create a situation where children feel comfortable to speak out and know that they won’t be ridiculed by anyone."

The schools system in England is failing poorer children "at every turn", says the Shadow Schools Secretary, Michael Gove.

He says initiatives to close social inequalities in exam results and staying on rates are not succeeding.

But the Conservatives say they have no plans to scrap the maintenance allowance to keep youngsters in school.

Schools Minister Jim Knight says that "Tory policies would simply preserve excellence for the few".

Mr Gove’s speech asserted his party’s commitment to strengthening family life, promoting responsible fatherhood and supporting children from the most deprived backgrounds.

‘Opportunity gap’

"Schools should be engines of social mobility, the places where inherited disadvantages are overcome and individual talents can be nurtured to make opportunity more equal," Mr Gove told the IPPR think tank.

"But the record of this government has been of inequality growing, and the opportunity gap widening, between the fortunate and the forgotten.

"In the last year for which we have figures the gap at GCSE between the performance of students in the 10% of wealthiest areas and the 10% of poorest areas doubled."

Mr Gove’s speech highlighted the lack of success for pupils on free school meals at the basic level and among the high-flyers.

He warned that 47% of such poorer pupils did not achieve a single GCSE at grade C - and that only 176 pupils eligible for free school meals had achieved three A grades at A-level - less than 1% of the total.

The Conservatives have also argued that there has been too little progress in poorer pupils staying on at school beyond the age of 16, despite the introduction of the education maintenance allowance (EMA).

But a party spokesman said that there were no plans to stop the EMA, which gives financial support to keep youngsters in education.

Mr Gove also spoke of his support for the Sure Start scheme to help families with young children.

Deadline

Schools Minister Jim Knight rejected the claims that the government is failing to tackle the achievement gap between rich and poor pupils.

He pointed to the current "National Challenge" which has set a deadline to ensure that all secondary schools in England, including those serving the most deprived areas, achieve at least 30% of pupils getting five good CGSEs.

Individual catch-up lessons in reading, writing and maths, the forthcoming Diplomas and raising the leaving age to 18 would all be steps to supporting children from poorer backgrounds, he said.

"If the Tories were serious about improving outcomes for the poorest children, they would support our plans to strengthen local children’s trusts, drop their pledge to cut funding to Sure Start and finally commit themselves to our ambitious targets on child poverty."

Nearly half of senior managers believe education in the UK has declined over the last 10 years, despite improvements in exam results, a study suggests.

The majority of managers polled in an Institute of Directors study also said young people’s skills, particularly in writing and mathematics, had weakened.

But the survey of 500 institute members also suggests that young people have better information technology skills.

The government said results had risen and quality was sharply scrutinised.

In its report, Education Briefing Book, the IoD suggests more than half (55%) of its members feel the government’s performance on education and skills has been unfavourable to business.

This compares to one in eight IoD members who felt it was favourable.

Another survey for the IoD of 100 university admissions tutors, carried out as part of the report, suggested some of these concerns were shared by academics.

The snapshot survey found 72% of admissions tutors believed the quality of undergraduates beginning a course in their department had remained the same or got worse. Just 28% thought the quality of students had risen.

These findings go against the official figures on educational attainment, which show huge improvements over the past decade.

In higher education, the proportion of students awarded first class or upper second class degrees in the UK increased from one third to 57% between 1982 and 2007.

At GCSE, the proportion of people achieving five good GCSEs in England has increased from 45.1% to 62% between 1997 and 2007.

At A-level, the pass rate rose for the 16th year in succession to reach 97.4% last year. And the percentage of A-levels graded A to C has doubled since the mid-1980s to 72.6%.

The paper also contains a review of current academic research into educational standards which suggests that although there is evidence of a rise in attainment at some levels, the actual increase is lower than the official figures suggest.

‘Higher expectations’

Director general of the IoD, Miles Templeman, said there was a substantial "credibility gap" between what official statistics showed and what employers felt "on the front line".

"It is probably impossible to determine definitively the extent to which education services have improved or otherwise over the last decade.

"However, the analysis conducted for the Briefing Book suggests that we approach official statistics with caution. This matters."

England’s Schools Minister Jim Knight said there was no doubt that English and maths standards had risen over the last decade.

"Business concerns about school leavers reflect the reality of the changing economy - with historic low unemployment and the virtual elimination of low-skill jobs.

"The reality is that employers rightly have far higher expectations of workers’ skills than ever before."

He said employers’ concerns were being tackled in England with tougher A-levels and GCSEs, improved skills training and the work alongside employers to introduce the new Diploma next year.

The report says much of the data it includes relates to England but that its authors have tried to include information from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland as well.

The Scottish Government would not comment on the report as it said it focused on GCSE and A-lelvel results - exams which are not taken in Scotland.

Helping to build a school for an African village is not a typical course of study for an English 16-year-old.

But this is exactly how 45 International Baccalaureate and AS-level students spent 10 unforgettable days in July.

While many of their teenage peers were enjoying summer holiday lie-ins, youngsters from Taunton’s College in Southampton worked from 8.30am to 3.30pm in the hot Tanzanian sun.

They were helping to build classrooms at Msaranga Primary School in Moshi, about an hour’s journey from the northern city of Arusha.

The college’s Tanzanian project co-ordinator Dr Kerry Pringle said: "The school has 800 pupils in nine classrooms.

"So we went there to help build them another nine classrooms."

The pupils, and the six members of staff who accompanied them, travelled out every day to the school from the international boarding school where they were sleeping, on what became known as a "death bus".

"The students called it that because you could see the road through the bottom as it went along.

"It’s the sort of vehicle that would have definitely failed its MOT here," said Dr Pringle.

Once at the school, they formed human chains and passed soil, rocks and other materials in metal trays from one end to the other in the red dust.

"They had absolutely no equipment and we were doing manual labour," said Dr Pringle.

"We said, ‘Why don’t you buy some wheelbarrows?’ and they said, ‘Wheelbarrows are expensive and they break, labour is much cheaper’.

"So we did everything by hand."

90 to a class

Wheelbarrows cost about the same in Tanzania as they do in England, she explained, at about £50, but on an average monthly salary of £4, they are far dearer for a Tanzanian.

"When the pupils came out for their breaks, they would help with the work too. That made me cry," she said.

Sixteen-year-old Maggie Callinan, one of the IB students who went on the trip, said even the smallest children in the school would come out and help.

"It was quite worrying in a way because we could be passing them heavy cement and you wondered if they could manage it."

She went on: "But the children were so excited when they saw us. They all wanted to talk to us and hold our hands.

"Most of them knew some English, which they had learnt at school. Some of them had really good English, I was quite surprised.

"Some of them would try to teach us Swahili words. These were mainly words like faster and slower that we could use as we worked."

The fathers and mothers of the school children would come and work on the building project as well.

Dr Pringle said: "They really put us English to shame. They didn’t take breaks or even stop for lunch, while we were pausing for water all the time."

By the end of their trip, the pupils had achieved half of the 100 hours needed for the creativity, action and service part of their IBs, but they left with much more than that.

Maggie says the trip made her realise how lucky she is and how much she takes for granted.

"The classrooms were very basic. They were concrete buildings with black boards at the front and there were quite a lot of children in them.

"That’s why we were building the new classrooms so the classes could be separated out."

With such huge class sizes, one might expect behaviour to be a problem.

But according to Dr Pringle, the children behaved beautifully because they really valued their education.

"Not all the teachers would turn up every day, but the children just sat there quietly and got on with their work.

"Their school uniforms were immaculate. It was their best outfit, sometimes the only outfit they had, except for rags.

"In Tanzania you can only go to school if you have shoes, so they all kept their shoes beautifully as well."

At the end of the trip, the students were so moved by the challenges faced by these Tanzanian families that they all left their shoes behind for them.