Commenting on the Governments decision on school performance
tables, Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of the National
Education Union, said:
“Even in a normal year to attempt use qualifications results to
put schools and colleges in league tables is a dangerously
inaccurate use of statistics: whilst qualifications are
important, they are designed to measure the attainment of
individuals and not the quality of teaching and learning that
took place at an institution. Context, which is non-existent in
these tables, is key and whilst qualifications are important for
the individual, schools and colleges are about so much more than
the results achieved on one particular day in a set of tests or
exams.
'However, it is even more farcical to suggest that there can be
any kind of meaningful measure of educational quality derived
from the results of next summer’s exams. Due to the pandemic,
they will quite clearly be heavily impacted by the differing
experiences students have faced across the country and the
situation across different schools and colleges simply will not
be in any way comparable.
'The government's decision on primary assessment, based on
confused reasoning, will be just as damaging to schools. Although
league tables will not be published, test results will still be
used for accountability purposes, not least by Ofsted. This means
that the pressures of high-stakes testing will be reintroduced -
and felt by pupils - at the very time when a different,
recovery-based approach to education is needed.
'The continued mistreatment of education professionals brings
shame on this government. Its decisions, including this one, will
come as a sore disappointment to all those who have been working
in very difficult conditions to keep educational provision going
throughout the last year or more.”
