Gap in school results growing - report

Dr Bill Maxwell was also critical of the quality of education services provided by some local authorities.

He was unveiling his first annual report as Chief Inspector of schools and colleges at St Joseph's RC High School.

He said the picture for 2006/07 was positive in many respects.

But, although standards had improved, the way education and training was provided must continue to be transformed to match best performing schools in the UK and abroad.

He said an increasing number of schools had showed excellence across the seven areas inspected by Estyn and it was clear this was due to better leadership as well as improvements in teaching.

More outstanding work was being done in further education and colleges were exceeding Assembly targets.

"Despite an increase in the number of schools that are showing excellence in aspects of their work, the gap between the best and the worst is getting larger," said Dr Maxwell.

"Other schools are very close to entering the formal category of 'causing concern' and, overall, around 10 per cent of schools are clearly not doing well enough."

Sixteen schools were identified as need special measures or significant improvement - double the number of the previous year.

"Some local authorities did not focus their support on under-performing schools at an early enough stage to prevent them becoming a cause for concern.

"The quality of education services provided by local authorities inspected by Estyn continues to be highly variable.

Two-thirds of the local authority education services inspected were judged to have uncertain prospects for improvement."