The table provides information about seven different educational problems faced by children in two primary schools, labelled School A and School B. The data is given for two separate years, 2005 and 2015, and is shown as percentages of children experiencing each difficulty.
Overall, the most noticeable trend is that School A saw a significant drop in many of its problem areas over the ten-year period, while School B’s situation remained more stable or even worsened slightly in some categories. In 2005, School A had much higher percentages of problems than School B in almost every area, but by 2015, this gap had become much smaller.
Looking at the figures for School A, in 2005 a very high number of children had problems with following instructions (42%) and concentration (40%). These were the two biggest issues for the school. However, by 2015, these figures had fallen dramatically to just 18% for both areas. Similarly, problems with listening skills and verbal expression both dropped from 35% in 2005 to around 20% in 2015. While most areas improved, the percentage for reading ability stayed almost the same, rising slightly from 22% to 23%.
For School B, the situation was quite different. The percentages in 2005 were much lower than School A’s in all categories, with spelling (5%) and following instructions (6%) being the least common problems. By 2015, some of these figures had increased a little. For example, the number of children with spelling problems doubled from 5% to 10%, and following instructions also rose from 6% to 12%. Other areas, like reading, handwriting, and concentration, remained almost exactly the same over the ten years.