According to a recent report released by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), more than ten thousand pupils were off-rolled from British public schools this year. Many of the pupils were in-between year ten and year eleven when GCSE exams are taken.
The reason behind this strange disappearance of students from school registries can be explained by the increased pressure on schools to perform better on GCSE. A large part of the government funding education institutions receive is directly related to their students’ performance on national tests.
According to Ofsted, there are around three hundred and forty (340) public schools in England, which display a heightened level of student transfers. The report further details that among these schools, an average of thirteen students (13) students have left.
10k pupils were off-rolled, but did they go to another school?
One of the main concerns for auditors from Ofsted is not that so many pupils were off-rolled, but that many of them did not re-enter the public educational system.
Unfortunately, more than fifty percent of the ten thousand pupils off-rolled have not been traced to a new public school, which means that they probably entered an independent institution, or decided to stay home-schooled.
There is a rising tendency for families to prefer sending their children to private institutions, or finding teachers for them, so they remain on a home-schooling schedule. Most of these families have decided to switch to an alternative because of the rising dissatisfaction with the public education system in the United Kingdom (UK).
There are reports that some families in Wales got to the point where they had to pay for their children’s music and art classes, even though they are part of the curriculum in public schools.
While schools are trying to reach a certain standard and perform better on GCSEs, many pupils were unfoundedly off-rolled in the past several years. This is an illegal practice, and Ofsted has promised to keep an eye on the schools where there is a heightened student movement, to battle the worrying tendency.
