Interpreting league tables – a parents’ guide

School league tables have been with us for over 15 years. But do they tell you which schools are best and how much should they influence you when it comes to choosing a school for your daughter? In isolation, a league table of one year of A level or GCSE results simply tells you how each school fared that year with that group of students and in relation to other schools. It sounds simple but here are some of the issues you need to bear in mind when looking at them.

Measuring different things

A major problems for parents is the sheer number of school league tables that are in existence. Broadly they fall into two categories: those produced by national and local newspapers and those produced by the Government usually in January each year. Newspapers publish leagues tables based on GCSE and A level exam results each summer from data usually supplied to them directly by schools or in the case of independent schools, by the Independent Schools Council. The earlier the tables are produced following the publication of the exams results, the less accurate they are likely to be as they will not take into account any re-marks or missing grades that frequently occur each year. Each newspaper will decide how it wishes to rank the exam results and this is why a school can appear in completely different positions in different league tables. For instance, some newspapers will count the quantity of exams taken giving points for each grade awarded, whereas others will focus on quality and rank schools according to percentages of top grades. This means that schools that have a policy of entering its student for say no more than say 8 GCSEs might be penalised, whereas a school that allows students to take as many GCSEs as they like may be favoured. This does not mean that the first school is any less successful than the second; it is merely a reflection of that school’s exams policy. Similarly some newspapers will include General Studies at A level and other will not. As a general rule the key statistic to focus on are percentage A and B grades at A level and percentage A and A* grades at GCSE.

Alternative qualifications

The issue is further clouded by many schools now adopting alternative qualifications to GCSE and A level. Qualifications such as IGCSE, the Pre-U, the IB which are now offered by an increasing number of independent schools use different grading systems and cannot easily be translated into GCSE and A level equivalents. To add to the confusion, the IGCSE is not recognised in the Government league tables.

How academically selective is the school?

The tables tell you how good the teaching is, up to a point, but, as critics will argue, the reader can only speculate on how much value the school has added. A school’s league table position often tells you more about its admissions policy and how academically selective it is than how much value it add to its students. You may not be choosing a highly academic school for your daughter, in which case league table position is less of an indicator of that school’s worth and may not give an inaccurate picture of the quality of the school.

Future of league tables

Many educationists now feel that the days of league tables are numbered. With many schools diversifying into different qualifications it is getting harder to make any credible like for like comparison. Many Heads in the independent sector feel that league tables give an inaccurate and misleading picture of the worth of their school and have stopped submitting their results so the tables are incomplete.

What matters most is not whether a school had a good year and crept up a few places but whether the school’s performance is consistent over the years. What you want to know is that, if you choose a school for your 11 year old, you can be confident that the staff and systems are in place to allow her to flourish in 2016.