Tories consider repeaters at UK primary schools

Conservative Party leader David Cameron said yesterday he is looking at forcing poorly performing children to resit their final year at primary school to try to raise standards in the "three Rs".

Pupils could be kept back a year or attend summer school before embarking on their secondary school education, to help them catch up, he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.

His comments are part of a package of ideas drawn up by his party's public services policy review group which this week publishes its suggestions on how to improve discipline in the schoolroom.

The ideas, which also include providing "advantage premiums" to schools that take pupils from poorer backgrounds, are likely to appeal to Tory traditionalists as the party gears up its tactics in an attempt to derail any plans Labour may have to call a snap election this autumn, the paper said.

Mr Cameron wrote: "We will look carefully at our policy group's idea of giving pupils who are falling behind at the age of 11 the chance to catch up and reach the right standard in the basics.

"This could be either during the summer before secondary school, or even in a repeat of the final primary school year."

Such schemes are used in the US and many European countries.

Mr Cameron said that 43 per cent of 11-year-olds cannot read, write and add up properly at the end of year six, the final year at primary school.

Education has a key role to play in tackling social breakdown, he said.

"Take any marker of our broken society, and educational failure lies at its root," he wrote. "Four in every five youngsters receiving custodial sentences have no qualifications."

But the government and some teaching unions questioned Mr Cameron's figures.

A spokesman for the National Association of Head Teachers said the figure of 43 per cent was "absolutely and completely wrong".

"Just because you miss a level four by a couple of marks doesn't mean to say that you can't read and you can't write," he told BBC television.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said the idea of an extra year was "flawed with some difficulty".

He told BBC television: "If people aren't getting to the standard they need to in English or maths then they should have catch-up classes when they get into secondary on a one-to-one basis."

Other ideas put forward by the policy group include putting more emphasis on core subjects, giving teachers greater independence, keeping special needs schools open and giving academies more freedom.