Tables 'should take longer view'

School league tables do not guarantee good results

The way school league tables in England are currently presented may seriously mislead parents, say researchers.

A new study claims to show how the annual tables, which rely on children's test results, can suffer from quite random changes and vary considerably year on year.

The scientists, who report their work in a Royal Society journal, believe the tables should reflect schools' performances over a number of years instead.

They say this approach would give parents a more informative guide as to how well their local schools are doing.

Little effect

Performance tables were introduced by the government in the 1990s to help parents compare the relative merits of schools.

Large amounts of data have to be collected to compile them.

And although many parents consider the information they contain a key factor in deciding where to send their children, many education professionals have serious doubts about the tables' usefulness.

According to some previous research, schools may have relatively little effect on how well youngsters perform. The biggest influence appears to be the children themselves - how bright they are and how much encouragement and help they get at home.

These earlier studies have shown that only about 10% of the variation in a child's performance is due to the school.

Misjudging schools

Dr James Robinson, from the University of Warwick, has now focused on the reliability of the performance tables.

With his colleague Dr Rebecca Hoyle, he created a mathematical model to see how a school's performance changed when certain variables were altered - such as the quality of the intake or parents rushing to choose the school because of its league position.

Dr Robinson said the model showed up how volatile the performance tables could be.

"If a good school has a bad year or a bad school has a good year, then clearly this will change their position in the table."

And it meant that if parents just looked at one set of tables, they could badly misjudge a school, he said.

Many years

Dr Robinson is uncomfortable about league tables in their current form.

"Results should be averaged over a number of years, which would be much more accurate."

He advises parents, before they make up their minds, to look at the league tables from as many years as possible and to visit the schools first.

Dr Hoyle, from the University of Surrey, added: "Parents should not be overly concerned about the league table position for their child's school."

The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

New measures

National tables are no longer published in Northern Ireland or Wales.

In England the Department for Education does not publish league tables as such - that is done by the news media.

It always cautions against reading too much into the raw results.

In the performance data it issues, it includes four years' worth of results as an "improvement measure" - so that the trend can be seen.

But in an effort to make the data more meaningful it is in the process of introducing so-called "value added" tables.

These show the progress the same set of pupils have made from one set of tests to another.

Doing this shows whether or not a school is bringing them on - and exposes those which have good final results simply because they have a high-achieving intake.

In Scotland the tables show three years' worth of results and track the progress of a single year group - although the attempt to do this throws up anomalies in the tables.

The results for England's primary schools were published on Thursday 5 December.

Primary school tables
Click here for school-by-school results