Responding to commentary by Sir Michael Wilshaw on the most able pupils, Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said:

“Sir Michael is absolutely right to highlight the plight of bright disadvantaged young people whose talents are being wasted. We have shown in our research how this ‘missing talent’ means that a third of disadvantaged boys and a quarter of disadvantaged girls in the top 10% nationally at age 11 are outside the top 25% by their GCSEs.

“We need to see a national drive to support highly able pupils from primary through secondary school, and on to universities.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

  1. Missing Talent, published by the Sutton Trust in June 2015, looked at the group of pupils who are in the top 10% nationally in their Key Stage 2 tests, yet who five years later receive a set of GCSE results that place them outside the top 25% of pupils. There are about 7,000 such pupils each year.