Catch-up classes 'fail to help struggling secondary pupils'

Catch-up classes are failing to help struggling pupils despite a £670m investment in raising standards in the early years of secondary education, the Government's schools watchdog said yesterday.

The findings are a setback for Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, who aims to transform secondary schools after improvements in primary schools made during Labour's first term.

Booster maths lessons to help secondary pupils who had fallen behind at primary school were found to be particularly poor. Fewer than half of students caught up after attending the extra classes, according to Ofsted's evaluation of the third year of the Government's strategy to improve the early years of secondary school.

The strategy was introduced to raise standards for pupils aged 11 to 14 by improving teaching, boosting literacy and numeracy standards across the curriculum and helping struggling pupils to catch up.

The report did find better quality teaching and better attitudes to work among students. Pupils' results were improving, it said, but progress was uneven, and more needed to be done to address "persistent weaknesses" in assessing children's progress.