Commenting on changes* to school and college
performance tables announced by the Department for Education,
Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and
College Leaders, said:
“While we are pleased that the Education Secretary is taking
steps to reduce the potentially damaging impact of performance
tables on schools and colleges following the Covid pandemic, it
is hugely disappointing that he is still intent on publishing
this information despite recognising that the data is
problematic.
“The inherent flaw is that the pandemic has hit schools and
colleges to vastly differing extents and it follows that
performance measures based on exam results will also be affected
to differing extents making this data an unreliable indicator of
performance.
“The changes announced by the Department for Education to
ameliorate this situation are designed to reduce the likelihood
of unfair comparisons being made between schools and colleges,
which is a step in the right direction, but it will still result
in performance data being published for each school and college
which will affect public perceptions.
“It would be simpler and fairer to suspend performance tables for
a further year to allow some sort of return to normality before
returning to the full barrage of accountability measures to which
educational institutions are subjected.”
*Secondary accountability
measures – update. P7 Changes to the Compare School and
College Website for the 2021/22 academic year.
