The proportion of pupils obtaining five good GCSEs in core subjects is in long-term decline, research suggests.

As 600,000 pupils prepare to open their GCSE results tomorrow, a new analysis of the trends in results shows a widening gap between the pass rate for five good GCSEs in any subject and for pass rate when fundamental subjects such as maths and science are included.

The proportion of students gaining five good (A*-C) GCSEs including English, maths, science and a language, has fallen from 61 per cent in 1996 to 44 per cent last year. Over the same period the overall pass rate for five good GCSEs in any subject has risen from 44 to 58 per cent. Tomorrow’s results are expected to show another rise.

Michael Gove, the Tory education spokesman, who carried out the analysis, said the results suggested that schools were trying to maximise their league table position by moving away from core subjects, the very subjects that universities and employers were looking for most.

Heads are accused of entering students for “easier” vocational courses — which can be worth more than four GCSEs each in the league tables.

“These figures emphasise the importance of truly robust measurements of achievement. The decline in core subjects marks a worrying trend and underlines the need for teaching to focus on the neglected basics,” Mr Gove said.

The Conservative analysis shows that, although the proportion of pupils getting five or more good GCSEs in any subject has increased by 13.6 percentage points in the past decade, the improvement when English and mathematics are taken into account is less than ten points.

Figures including English, maths and science have improved by only 5.4 percentage points on the period. Figures including English, mathematics, science and a modern foreign language, have declined since 1996, by 1.5 points.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, rejected the Tory analysis as “cheap spin”. As modern foreign languages were no longer compulsory at GCSE, it made no sense to include them in any new league table of results, he said.

“Adding any optional GCSE in and then using this as evidence of failure simply undermines the real achievements of teachers, schools and pupils,” he said.

“The number of children achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths has risen substantially since 1997, and our new tough measures will show the proportion achieving grade C or above in a modern foreign language as well as science.”

At the heart of the disagreement between the Government and the Opposition lies a fundamental disagreement over how best to measure school performance. Last year ministers took the bold step of introducing a new, deliberately tougher benchmark showing how schools were performing in the basics of literacy and numeracy.

By this measure, only 45 per cent of pupils achieved five good GCSE passes, including English and maths — considerably less than the 58 per cent of pupils achieving five good passes in any subject, the traditional measure.

Later this year the Government will add science passes to its basic measure of success. The Tories, however, want an even greater emphasis on core, or traditional subjects.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, agreed that merely measuring how many pupils got five good GCSEs in any subject was no longer satisfactory, as this masked weaknesses in the basics. “You could take an NVQ in ICT [information and communication technology] and this would be worth the equivalent of four GCSEs,” he said. But he questioned the Tory analysis: “It is stretching a point to include modern foreign languages, as these are not compulsory.”

Professor Smithers added, however, that he expected this year’s maths results to be disappointing. Last year the pass rate in maths was lower than for all other main subjects, as more than 343,000 pupils (45.7 per cent) failed to gain even a C.

Doing the maths

44%

of pupils gained five or more GCSEs including English, mathematics, science and a modern foreign language last year

61%

of pupils achieved the same standard in 1996

Source: Hansard

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