THE head of the Government’s specialist schools programme cast doubt yesterday on the extent of improvement in English standards in primary schools.

Sir Cyril Taylor said that head teachers of many secondary schools were sceptical that children could read to a sufficient standard if they had passed the national curriculum English test at 11. The Government has pointed to rising pass rates in the so-called key stage 2 tests of English and mathematics at 11 as evidence that it has transformed standards in primary schools since 1997.

Jacqui Smith, the School Standards Minister, said in August that this year’s results showed that “the landscape of achievement has changed dramatically” under Labour. A record 79 per cent of pupils reached Level 4 in English, the expected standard, and 75 per cent in mathematics.

But Sir Cyril, who is chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), said that secondary heads wanted to see the raw marks awarded to children in the tests to gauge their true ability on arrival as new Year 7 students.

Sir Cyril said that the raw scores could help to identify those pupils who had scraped through at Level 4, often with the help of last-minute intensive coaching.

He will urge heads attending the SSAT’s annual conference in Birmingham today to consider introducing new reading and mathematics tests for children entering their schools .

He will say that specialist schools have to do more to improve standards of literacy and numeracy. Less than half of children who passed five or more GCSEs this year obtained good grades in both English and maths.“A child who cannot read cannot learn. Schools need to identify Year 7 children with poor literacy and numeracy as quickly as possible,” Sir Cyril said.

The trust is running experiments with an American online testing system. Sir Cyril said that children could not be coached to improve their scores because the computer generated different questions each time and kept track of the ones taken by individual students. It could also be used to track progress in reading and numeracy over time. He is also expected to ask heads to consider building boarding accommodation in school grounds to improve educational opportunities for children in care.

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