An annual report has revealed that there is a significant dip in school performance in Wiltshire at Year 6 level, particularly in maths.

Although the data shows that overall Wiltshire performance is not dissimilar from other local authorities, it indicates that the county’s performance ranking drops to 118 out of 158 local authorities for Year 6 SATs.

The performance ranking for maths progress at this level is at 140 out of 158.

The report refers to performance outcomes for the 2022/2023 academic year and was presented to Wiltshire Council’s Children’s Select Committee at its meeting on Tuesday, March 12.

Councillors were shown that Wiltshire performs well at Early Years, with 68.9 per cent of pupils achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD).

This figure is above the percentage for the South West (68 per cent) and the rest of England (67.2 per cent).

However, the committee was told of a “declining picture” in Key Stage 2.

Whereas the county is in line with national figures in Key Stage 1, performance declines in Key Stage 2 to 5 per cent below the national average, placing Wiltshire in the bottom 10 per cent of local authorities when looking at progress from the previous Key Stage.

This gap in performance has further increased for disadvantaged pupils.

The Chairman of the committee, Councillor Jon Hubbard, said he was “worried” by the figures and suggested a scrutiny meeting to look at more detailed data and understand the Year 6 performance dip.

Councillor Helen Belcher, a former secondary school maths teacher, noted that the data shows secondary schools are doing a “phenomenal job at picking up from where the primary schools have dropped down to.”

She also suggested that it might be useful for the committee to have an indication of how confident primary school teachers are with different subject areas.

Councillor Dominic Muns said: “I think further scrutiny of it is really important, but just to allay fears, it’s on the radar of Wiltshire Learning Alliance that there are specific schools that we need to be working more closely with as well.”

The report concluded: “It is our disadvantaged learner performance that remains a strategic priority alongside mathematics in the Primary phase which has shown a significant decline over the past twelve months.

“The disadvantaged strand is a key area of focus within the Wiltshire Learning Alliance, in the context of mathematics, there has been ongoing engagement with one of the Mobius Maths Hub practitioners who have the strategic oversight of the subject in the Wiltshire area to understand the decline.”