Tower Hamlets students failing to get good grades on Ebacc pic: Alamy

Less than 6 per cent of students in Tower Hamlets achieved A to C grades in the six academic subjects that form the English baccalaureate – nicknamed ‘ebacc’ – a recent survey shows.

Nine per cent of these students took the traditional topics of English, maths, two sciences, a language and history or geography. The average was 16.5 per cent across the UK.

The Conservative Party survey also found that in Knowsley, Merseyside, only three per cent of students got the ebacc.

Knowsley, like Tower Hamlets, is among the most deprived parts of the UK. In wealthier areas such as Buckinghamshire, 33.2 per cent of pupils achieve the qualification.

Researchers asked local authorities to provide information on the number of students who did GCSEs in the six subjects as well as information on how many of those pupils attained a C grade or more.

Reacting to the statistics, a Tower Hamlets Council spokesperson said: “Part of the explanation for Tower Hamlets’ baccalaureate results is that while we have relatively high levels of participation and performance in English, maths and the sciences, fewer pupils have historically opted to study history/geography or languages.”

The spokesperson added Tower Hamlets’ pupils GCSE results had improved in the last decade, and said: “last year our pupils out-performed their national peers at GCSE level for the first time ever. 60.4 per cent of Tower Hamlets pupils achieved at least five A* to C passes including English and Maths, compared with 58.3 per cent of GCSE pupils nationally. This figure was 8.6 percentage points above Tower Hamlets’ result last year, which is almost double the rate of improvement achieved nationally.