Are school league tables finally coming of age or are they on their way out? It seems to depend partly on where you live.

The 2001 tables are the 10th to appear in England, where they have become a hardy perennial in the school year.

However, in Wales and Northern Ireland they will not be appearing as education ministers in both countries have decided they are unnecessary.

Scotland, which failed to publish last year because of the exam marking fiasco, is publishing two years' worth in 2001.

But how long will it be before the Scots follow Wales and Northern Ireland?

Information for parents

Let's remind ourselves how this all began.

Schools had just settled into the 1991 autumn term when the then Conservative Education Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, promised to "take the mystery" out of education by publishing comparative tables of school examination results.

His announcement was a "double whammy" for schools as he also heralded the creation of a new schools inspectorate, an organisation we now know as Ofsted.

The two new policies, part of the "Parent's Charter", were intended to increase the amount of information given to parents and so improve school accountability.

On that day in September 1991, Mr Clarke - a man who liked to "call a test a test, not an assessment" - told me in a BBC interview that he did not want the league tables to be too complicated.

As he put it: "Some people argue all kinds of complicated information should be added to it so that nobody really can understand it unless they have got a PhD in statistics. We want simple, straightforward factual information."

'Crude'

At the time, his opposite number - Labour's education spokesman, a certain Jack Straw - said league tables based on "crude" or raw results would tell parents only how selective a school was.

He advocated a "value added" measure which would give some indication of the effectiveness of the teaching at different schools.

Well, it may have taken several years, but we do now have at least a "pilot" scheme for a "value added" index of schools.

Click here for a sample "value added" table

It covers just 200 schools but the idea is to use this as a stepping-stone to "value added" tables for all schools next year.

How it works

So what does the "value added" measure tell us?

It is an attempt to measure the improvement pupils achieve across two periods: First, from age 11 to age 14 and, second, from age 14 to 16.

This is done by using as a base-line pupils' scores from their tests in English, maths and science taken at the end of primary school.

Progress is then measured by how much those same pupils have improved their results in the national tests at 14 and then again at 16 when they take their GCSEs.

As this tracks the progress of the same group of students it should, in theory, be a reasonable indication of how well they have been taught or, put another way, of the effectiveness of the school.

Coasting

It therefore eliminates the inevitability of grammar and selective independent schools always topping the league tables just because they take only the brightest pupils at age 11.

If such schools are to do well in the "value added" tables they must ensure these bright pupils do even better at 14 and 16 than they did at age 11. If they just "coast along", the value added index will show this up.

Despite what Ken Clarke says about requiring a PhD in statistics, the "value added" tables should be reasonably easy to read as the index has been presented as a measure centred around 100.

Schools which score over 100 are those where pupils have, on average, made more progress than the same age group nationally. Those with scores below 100 are schools where pupils have made less progress.

Too late?

A huge effort has gone into all this. But are league tables finally reaching a level of sophistication just at the point when the very concept of league tables is losing support?

It will be interesting to see whether parents in Wales and Northern Ireland feel they are losing out. They will, of course, still be able to get the results from their own local school as these will still be published in its prospectus.

There must also be some doubt over just how much parents care about league tables.

A couple of years ago, research from the London School of Economics suggested that half of the parents of secondary school children had either not seen the league tables or said they did not understand them.

Pointer

A more recent study from a marketing firm suggested exam results come 10th in a list of parents' top 20 priorities for schools.

However, parents may say they do not make school choice decisions based on league tables but, in my experience, most are at least interested to see how their local schools have performed. It is a starting point, if no more, for parents trying to choose a secondary school.

It may be that we are approaching a more mature attitude towards league tables.

In the early days, they attracted huge attention. While this may have motivated some schools to greater efforts, it could also be disheartening to those at the bottom.

Now, with any luck, newspapers will get less excited by who is at the top or bottom of the tables while parents will be able to use the "value added" index to separate those schools which are doing well simply because they have a talented intake, from those which do well through excellent teaching.

It shows what percentage of pupils have special educational needs (SEN), what percentage get at least five A* to C grades at GCSE, and the new "VA" measure of how much they have been brought on since their tests at age 14.

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