‘Invisible’ poor children let down by schools, says Ofsted head

By Angela Harrison
Education correspondent, BBC News

Sir Michael Wilshaw said a spotlight needed to be shone on local authorities that are failing children

Many of the poor children being left behind in schools now are in suburbs, market towns and seaside resorts rather than big cities, England’s chief inspector of schools has said.

In a speech, Sir Michael Wilshaw said such pupils were often an “invisible minority” in schools rated good or outstanding in quite affluent areas.

He wants a new team of “National Service Teachers” sent in to help.

Sir Michael has praised big improvements in London schools.

And he says other big cities, such as Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Leicester, have also made great strides.

‘Unseen children’

“Today, many of the disadvantaged children performing least well in school can be found in leafy suburbs, market towns or seaside resorts,” he said in the speech in London.” Often they are spread thinly, as an ‘invisible minority’ across areas that are relatively affluent.

“These poor, unseen children can be found in mediocre schools the length and breadth of our country. They are labelled, buried in lower sets, consigned as often as not to indifferent teaching.

“They coast through education until, at the earliest opportunity, they sever their ties with it.”

Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that many of the 1.2 million children in England on free school meals (FSM) were not doing well and that “two-thirds of these are white British children”.

“Where the problems now are, are in schools, good schools, outstanding schools, in county areas, with small proportions of poor children that are doing extremely badly.”