Watchdog voices concern over education targets

The Department of Education has been criticised by an assembly watchdog committee for reducing their targets for literacy and numeracy at a time when targets are being raised in England and Wales.

A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said they were disturbed to find that while many pupils are achieving extremely good literacy and numeracy standards at Key Stages 2 and 3, there were still too many schools which have “substantial ground to make up before departmental targets are achieved”.

The committee also expressed their concern over the cost of maintaining 45,000 vacant school places, which they said could be “more usefully directed towards supporting classroom supervision”.

The report - Indicators of Educational Performance and Provision - said the department had "lost credibility" when it came to setting targets in relation to literacy and numeracy among the province's schoolchildren.

"This is particularly worrying because such a substantial number of schoolchildren are failing to meet minimum accepted standards," it added.

Committee chairman Billy Bell said the department needed to "establish credible and realistic targets and to stick to them".

The committee, meanwhile, welcomed the department's plan to annually publish key statistics on education performance targets between boards and sectors.

"Through the production and publication of such information, the department can identify changes in the level of performance of the boards,” it said.

The committee also recognised the Department had notable success in key areas.

In pre-school education, the Department was ahead of target in providing nursery school places for 96 per cent of four year olds by 2003. In addition, the PAC said, “commendable efforts have been made in reducing overall class sizes in primary schools”.

Mr Bell added: “However, there is clearly room for improvement in the collation, provision and dissemination of performance information.

“Ready access to education performance indicators is essential if the Assembly and the community are to hold the Education and Library Boards accountable for their performance. Moreover, with the Northern Ireland Executive stressing education as one of its priorities, it is also essential that the Boards look carefully at how well they and their schools are performing in order to meet the challenges of the future.”

(AMcE)