Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the correlation between levels of achievement at Level 4 in (a) reading and (b) mathematics and national average scores in those subjects at GCSE level.

The standards reached at the end of primary school have a strong correlation with a pupil’s achievement at GCSE. The 2014 GCSE results show that only 22% of pupils who achieved the minimum expected standard (level 4c) at the end of KS2 went on to achieve 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths, whereas 73% of pupils who achieved above the expected level (above level 4c) went on to do so. It is for this reason that we have put in place a new higher expected standard for the end of primary school, helping to ensure that pupils are better prepared for secondary school.

The data showing the relationships between attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 and attainment at the end of Key stage 4 can be found in the 2014 Key Stage 2 to 4 National subject transition matrices (unamended) in the RAISEonline library: https://www.raiseonline.org/documentlibrary/ViewDocumentLibrary.aspx