School league tables

Tuesday 27th July 2004 at 12:12 AM

School league tables have been condemned as unreliable in their current form and almost impossible to interpret.

Urging parents not to be fooled by the figures released each year, Andy Grieve, the president of the Royal Statistical Society, said tables should acknowledge individual variations for a truer assessment.

Since their introduction in 1992, there has been debate over tests and school league tables as a measure of success.

Stakeholder Response: Institute of Education

Professor Harvey Goldstein, professor of statistical methods at the Institute of Education in the University of London, said: "There is growing consensus that comparing schools by raw test scores is unfair and that value added measures would solve the problem.
 
"But these also have their limitations, since they are often based on the performance of relatively small numbers of pupils, and no account is taken of the fact that pupils move between schools. It is also hard to measure the effects of advantage and disadvantage, though it is reasonable to assume that that they affect pupils’ progress.
 
"All of these issues make even value-added comparisons difficult. So is there anything to be gained by publicly displayed rankings?
 
"One of the responses of policy makers is that not to publish this information would be withholding information from the public. However, without including the caveats, it is clear that publishing them is misleading.
 
"The Welsh, Scottish and Irish governments agree with this and refuse to publish rankings of schools. If the Westminster government is going to continue publishing them, they need to accept the drawbacks and recognise that league tables (value-added or not) do not allow precise comparisons and diagnoses.

"There needs to be a lot more transparency and honesty about the limitations."

Stakeholder Response: NASUWT

Chris Keates, acting general secretary of the NASUWT, said: "The publication of league tables is an annual ritual which serves no useful purpose.

"Although they demonstrate the year on year improvement schools are making, inevitably and regrettably the focus will be on the alleged failures in the system rather than the significant achievements of pupils and teachers.

"Value-added data is put together using a limited criteria that does not truly show the achievements of schools nor takes into account the variations between schools in terms of class sizes."

Stakeholder Response: Secondary Heads Association

Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "Andy Brieve’s criticisms of the school and college league tables confirm SHA’s view, held ever since they were introduced. 

 

"The league tables purport to give parents a way of determining which school (where there is a choice) they would wish their children to attend.  However, they give only an illusion of such information – frequently misleading parents about the real strengths of schools.