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GCSE Results
This section looks at qualification attainment levels of Herefordshire's young people. This includes GCSE's taken at the end of compulsory education, usually at around age 15.
This indicator was first piloted by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in 2005, below are Herefordshire's results for the academic years 2005-06 to 2007-08 compared to the average for all pupils in England.
Chart 1. Percentage of pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 Achieving 5 or more A* - C GCSE's including English and Mathematics for Herefordshire and all English authorities
Source: DCSF, Neighbourhood statistics website, ONS, Crown copyright
The proportion of Herefordshire pupils achieving 5 or GCSE's at grades A*-C including Maths and English has increased over the last 3 years, increasing from 42% in 2005-06 to 52% in 2007-08. For the past 2 years Herefordshire's pupils have been performing better than the average for all pupils across England as a whole.
When looking separately at boy and girl pupils, girls performed better. Within Herefordshire in the academic year 2007-08, 46% of boys achieved 5 or more GCSE's at grades A*-C including Maths and English compared to 58% of girls, 12 percentage points less.
This difference in achievement by gender has been similar in Herefordshire over the past 3 years and similar to the gender difference across England as a whole, although in 2007-08, there was a slightly smaller difference with boys achieving 9 percentage points less than girls across England for this measure.
These figures are useful to show how Herefordshire compares to the rest of the country, however more detailed analysis of GCSE qualifications by pupil residence (Map below) shows the disparity of qualifications across the 40 wards in Herefordshire for the 2007-08 results. This analysis looks at where pupils are living and has made no assumptions about which school they attend.
The wards with the lowest proportion of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSE's at grades A*-C including Maths and English are:
- St Martins & Hinton (30% of pupils in that ward)
- Belmont (39%)
- Aylestone (39%)
The wards with the highest proportion are:
- Bircher (70%)
- Hagley (71%)
- Old Gore (72%)
- Hope End (76%)
The difference between the wards with the highest and lowest proportion of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs A*-C (including Maths and English) is quite large, so despite Herefordshire's figures overall looking positive this masks the gap between areas where pupils are performing well and where they are not.
