IN NORMAL times, Ruth Kelly would be trumpeting the GCSE results published in today’s secondary school performance tables, which show the largest rise in the proportion of students gaining five good grades for 11 years.
But times are far from normal for the beleaguered Education Secretary, battered by the controversy over sex offenders allowed to continue with their teaching careers and the mounting opposition from backbench Labour MPs to school reforms in the Government’s White Paper.
Schools will find much to celebrate, however, after a year of record results at both GCSE and A level. Teachers may complain that league tables of exam results provide an incomplete picture of their work, but parents find them an invaluable guide in assessing the reputations of local schools.
The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has added to the sense of abnormality by refusing to publish, without explanation or advance notice, its traditional list of the 100 most improved secondaries for GCSE results. Recent criticism that some schools in previous lists had been “padding” results by entering students for less demanding courses at the expense of traditional subjects may have been behind its decision.
Similar criticisms will be levelled in some quarters at the DfES’s decision to widen still further the range of qualifications in its assessment of school performance. Graded exams in music, dance, speech and drama are included for the first time this year in a school’s overall points score per candidate, in addition to a broad range of vocational courses added in 2004.
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How far a school should be given credit for a student’s grade 4 in violin, for instance, when it may have been as much the product of private tuition, will be a matter for controversy. Equally, schools that invest time and resources in developing students’ artistic abilities ought to be recognised and others encouraged to follow their lead.
The DfES has added other changes to the tables to report the achievements of pupils when they have reached the end of key stage 4, the period covering GCSEs, including those who are older or younger than 15 at the start of the final year.
The results are the same for the overwhelming majority of schools, although a few have a higher percentage of pupils meeting the threshold of five good GCSEs, and others a lower one, under the DfES’s new method.
The Times has retained the measure showing the proportion of pupils in their final year of compulsory schooling who achieved five GCSEs or equivalent at grade C and above, because it allows parents to compare a school’s performance last summer with that in 2004.
Under this measure, the proportion of pupils nationally who reached the standard rose 2.6 percentage points to 56.3 per cent in 2005 from 53.7 per cent in 2004. Under the DfES’s new system, the pass rate rose to 57.1 per cent.
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Further changes are planned to provide greater “contextual” understanding of the difference made by individual schools to pupils’ results. The DfES hopes to introduce so-called “Contextual Value Added” (CVA) scores next year after releasing the results of a pilot study in 430 schools later today.
The CVA measures a child’s progress at secondary school, taking into account a range of social factors alongside their level of academic achievement on entry. These include gender, first language, and a family poverty index developed by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
The Government argues that this will provide a “more sophisticated” measure of performance by recognising the impact of influences beyond schools’ control. But critics fear that it will be used to explain away low standards in schools serving poorer children, who most need a good education.
The tables published in this supplement show exam results for every state and independent secondary school in England in 2005. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have abandoned the publication of performance tables for individual schools.
A “value-added” measure of progress made by pupils between 11 and 16 excludes many independent schools because they have too few children who take national curriculum tests in English, mathematics and science at 11, on which the calculations are based.
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In common with other national newspapers, The Times does not publish the results of schools for pupils with special educational needs. Complete information on every school, including those serving pupils with special needs, is available at the education department’s website, www.dfes.gov.uk. Hard copies of the tables are obtainable on 0800 242322.