Recommendation 28

In the March 2022 Schools White Paper, the Department set ambitions that, by 2030, 90% of primary school children would achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, and the percentage of children meeting the expected standard in the worst performing areas would have increased by a third. The ambitions for secondary schools were for the national GCSE average grade in both English language and maths to increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5.0 by 2030.55 The Department has not set milestones between now and 2030 to show progress towards these ambitions.56 We asked the Department how, without milestones, it was going to track progress. The Department agreed that the long- term ambition in the Schools White Paper invited a recognition of the importance of setting progress measures. It had not done that in the White Paper, but expected to be able to make public its plans for primary school pupils in the next couple of months.57