It's that time of year again - the school league tables for GCSE and A-levels are out. As usual schools, education authorities and other interested parties are concerned that the tables are misleading, don't represent their achievements, put undue pressure on staff and pupils, etc.
It is one of the "joys" of performance statistics that however much you come up with what you consider a clean number to describe performance, someone will quibble with it or declare it unfair. Currently GCSE passes are unfair because they favour girls, some independent schools do international qualifications that don't count for league tables, they don't take into account the prior performance of the pupils or the socio-economic context of the school.
Value added indicators have now been added - you hear less about them being unfair, but my quibble with them is that they are tortuous to calculate and how do you describe them to the average parent at the end of a hard day at work?
Then you get all the issues about branding young people failures if they don't meet the current base threshold (5 GCSE A* to C passes including Maths and English), and how schools fiddle the figures by not letting some poorly performing pupils take any exams if they will bring down the school performance figure. Plus consternation from educationalists as to the validity of some of the qualifications that count towards that 5 good passes total.
Let's face it - there won't be a measure that pleases everyone. But that minimum standard - 5 good GCSE or equivalent passes - drives public spending and policy on learning and training. It should be the aim of society to furnish every young person that is capable with that minimum standard of education that will make the rest of their lives that bit easier, and the best time to do that is by the age of 16.
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