James Forsyth James Forsyth

Islington schools fail their pupils

Pete’s already posted on the thinking benhind Michael Gove’s speech on school reform, but reading it one statistic jumped out at me and struck me as worth noting:

“In the whole of Islington in the school year of 2006-7 not a single child took a GCSE in one of those sciences.”

The failure of any school in Islington to put a candidate forward for physics, biology or chemistry GCSE is a disgrace. It effectively bars all of these students from applying for a whole variety of science-based courses at our top universities. Next time you hear a government minister prattling on about how universities should do more to broaden access, think of this statistic.

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