England has large performance gap in primary maths

Analysis published by the Education Policy Institute and UCL Institute of Education shows that 90,000 more primary pupils need to achieve the expected maths standard at the end of primary for England to be considered “world class.

The ‘English Education: world class in primary?’ report used data from the 2015 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, where ten-year-olds in England were ranked tenth in the world.

The authors, John Jerrim, professor of social statistics at UCL Institute of Education, and Natalie Perera and Peter Sellen, both of the EPI, discovered that even though England compared reasonably well with other nations, there is a “long tail of underperformance”.

Natalie Perera, executive director and head of research at the Education Policy Institute, said: “The biggest cause for concern is the huge gulf between England’s top performing primary pupils, and those lagging behind at the bottom – one of the largest out of all developed countries.

"If we want to match standards in some of the world-leading nations and secure greater equity in our education system, more must be done to raise the attainment of our lowest, and often most vulnerable, pupils.”

By converting the Timss scores to the scores used in the key stage 2 maths tests, known as Sats, the report estimates that to match the performance of pupils in the top five countries – Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan – 90 per cent of children in England would need to reach the expected standard in the English Sats maths test, with an average scaled score of 107.