SEN attainment gap at Key Stage 4 (16 year olds)

Sources: here (table 3.4) and here (table 3.6). Year refers to academic year eg 2008 is 2007-08

The graph shows the SEN attainment gap at Key Stage 4 (16 year olds taking GCSEs or equivalent). It compares the SEN gap in North Yorkshire to the gap across other local authorities.

The best performing authorities have the smallest attainment gap using this measure, known as National Indicator 104. The upper and lower quartiles give an indication of how spread out the results are - that is 25% of authorities fall below the lower quartile, 50% fall below the average (median) and 75% fall below the upper quartile.

North Yorkshire's results are fairly dismal but the attainment gap for children with SEN at this age is smaller than for children at Key Stage 2 (11 year olds):

Sources:KS2 here (table 3.2) and here (table 3.4), KS4 here (table 3.4) and here (table 3.6). Year refers to academic year eg 2008 is 2007-08

Some questions spring to mind:

1   Why is there a difference between the attainment gap at KS4 compared to KS2? (This applies nationally as well as locally, but the difference is wider in North Yorkshire)

3   Why are the figures rising?