SCHOOL LEAGUE TABLES ARE A SORRY JOKE - ATL

6 December 2007

Martin Johnson, acting deputy general secretary at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said:

“School league tables are a sorry joke.  We are seeing testing for the sake of testing.  The tests do not give a real indication of what children can do, and are inaccurate in up to 30 per cent of tests by at least one grade.

“All the hard work being done by schools and pupils is going into the wrong thing – time and energy devoted to teaching children how to pass tests, instead of into children learning and gaining skills.  This demotivates teachers and pupils alike.

“And we are hugely dubious about the benefit of value added (VA), and even contextual value added (CVA) measures, as they fail to reflect the crucial variations between school intakes in terms of family wealth and support which are what play the biggest role in how well children perform.”