WIREDGOV

Student performance should not just be judged on short-term measures such as exam league tables and Ofsted inspections, council leaders say.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents over 400 councils across England and Wales, believes it is where a student finds employment or is further learning after they leave school or college that is equally important in judging just how well the education system has supported them.

In last week's Budget the government announced plans for a Youth Obligation to ensure all 18 to 21-year-olds are earning or learning. To help achieve this, councils are calling on government, schools and colleges to work with them to ensure every young person is well equipped to find employment or continue in learning when they leave post-16 education.

LGA commissioned research by Isos Partnership published today summarises the findings of a five-month project with councils leading new innovative approaches to tracking young people and helping schools and colleges improve the outcomes for their more vulnerable students. It concludes that government must:

• improve the quality and reliability of data at the national level by working locally with councils
• prioritise the use of data in assessing the performance of schools and colleges; and
• enable councils to build single local accountability arrangements that ensure all schools, colleges, jobcentres and others work together to improve the long-term outcomes of all school leavers.

Figures from the Department for Education published earlier this year showed that over 90 per cent of 16 to 18 year olds were in education, employment or training after completing their GCSEs. However there is very little national information on what pupils are doing after leaving college or university and little pressure on institutions to improve those outcomes.

The LGA is now calling on government to work with councils to refocus schools and colleges on improving what happens to students in the long term so that those that may lack direction or fall out of learning early on in a post-16 course are given the support needed to take a different path.

Cllr David Simmonds CBE, Chairman of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, said:

"School is the foundation for what happens for the rest of your life, and as the evidence about what students move onto post-16 becomes clearer, so does the opportunity to assess and deliver improvement that is focused around the long-term destinations of our young people.

"Measures such as league tables and snapshot inspections are increasingly unfit for the modern age. They risk focusing schools and colleges on short-term 'tick-boxes' rather than how the education they deliver helps their students to make the most of the opportunities life offers.

"Local authorities are right behind government's ambitions for improving this data, but services must reform to make the most of it. Rather than continuing the messy and fragmented accountabilities, government must enable councils to hold schools, colleges, and jobcentres collectively accountable for helping local young people to earn or learn."

Notes

1. The LGA's report, ‘Beyond the school gate: Using post-16 destination measures to improve outcomes for young people' can be downloaded from www.local.gov.uk
2. The most recent figures published by the Department of Education can be viewed here