According to figures, 80 per cent of pupils started secondary education this September with an acceptable standard of reading and writing, compared with 81 per cent in 2008.
One in five children failed to reach at least “Level 4” in the end-of-year exam – the basic standard expected of their age group.
According to the Government, this means that some 115,000 out of 577,000 pupils struggle to:
• Read “between the lines” of a story
• Get the point, moral and message of a piece of writing
• Write using extended sentences, employing commas to break them up
• Choose different words for effect
• Infer, predict and visualise while reading text.
Figures also show that he number of pupils leaving school with an acceptable level of mathematics stalled this year.
A total of 79 per cent of pupils gained Level 4 in the subject - the same as 2008.
This means that more than a fifth of pupils struggle to:
• Add, subtract, multiply and divide in their head comfortably
• Remember the multiplication tables up to 10x10
• Find a way to solve everyday problems
• Show clear and organised working out
• Check and estimate figures
• Plot co-ordinates on a graph
• Work out area and perimeter
• Represent and interpret data in suitable diagram form.
The Government has pledged to give one-to-one tuition to any pupil failing to reach accepted levels in the two subjects.