Scanning the school league tables produced by various British newspapers, one is struck by the apparent huge variation between performances of schools featured. At one end pupils are achieving an abundance of top grades; at the other, student achievement appears completely unremarkable or even deficient.

For years the UK has claimed a single, nationalized education system so that it should be possible to compare two schools’ performances on a level playing field. The league tables produced by the UK government and its media only tell part of the story however, and therefore can be rather misleading. There is an idiom in English which goes, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”. It is used to demonstrate how unreliable statistics are and how they can be easily manipulated by anyone to provide proof of anything.

UK schools can choose from many different courses of study for their pupils, and not all courses are the same, yet may appear to be the same in league table statistics. Another anomaly hidden by most league tables is concerned with the inherent ability of the pupils being measured. Some schools have selected pupils based on intellectual ability but others do not; yet all schools are measured on the same scales.

This is a little like comparing the ability of two very different animals by setting them the same task that suits some and not others.

Selective schools have strict tests prior to accepting students and only take those in the top 5-10% of ability for their age. Such schools should, of course, produce results that are at that level. If a selective school sits at the top of the tables, one should really expect it and it is not necessarily any indicator that it is a ‘good’ school. 

In non-selective schools, entry might be based on wider factors. They consider whether or not the school feels that a candidate would fit their ethos and values, whether the parents and the student are committed to their objectives, or if the pupils can offer something to the wider holistic education that is on offer, perhaps in the sporting, dramatic or creative fields. There are some schools that specialize in teaching those with additional learning needs. For these schools, of course, their results are not going to match those of selective schools and yet they are still often outstanding places of education.

One answer to this conundrum is to use a measure of school performance based on how much progress pupils make by the end of their studies, from the standard at which they started.

The government uses such a measure (known as Progress 8) to assess the quality of education in state schools. It analyses pupils’ results in their GCSE exams, compared with when they were aged 11 to show how much progress they have made. 

The chart below give you some idea of how this works. Ignoring final result grades and focusing only on progress, a different answer might be reached to the question as to which is the ‘best’ school.

Such measures are not available for independent schools however, although it can be calculated. At Wycliffe for example, we use a third-party independent software to analyse our data and this produces a Progress 8 score for us. Last year it was 2.73 and we are proud that no other school in the UK has ever posted a higher score than that. Yet Wycliffe won’t feature very high in newspaper league tables because we are non-selective and accept pupils whose results are not going to put us at the top.

Another similar measure is known as ‘added value’. It uses similar but less sophisticated measures to rate how well a school has added educational value, against expected progress for every pupil and then averages it for the school. So a pupil’s testing at the start of their school career might suggest they can attain a Grade B at the end of their studies. If they then get an A, the school is considered to have ‘added value’ in that subject. Scores are awarded for how far above or below the expected grade is achieved by each student in each subject. This is done for all subjects in a school so that an overall score is produced and then this gets compared to other schools to see how well they did against expectations and national averages.

This data does not get published in any newspapers or league tables but schools will have that information so it is worth asking directly for it. Any score above 0 shows the school is adding value. Many independent school use this but relatively few state schools do.

Ultimately parents need to work their way through a mass of information when choosing a UK school but should always remember that they should go beyond the school’s own advertising and negotiate the minefield of data to ask the right questions. Just because a school is at the top of a league table doesn’t make it a great school. If it selects only the brightest pupils, they should be at the top. But also ask how a non-selective school ensures that very able students are going to make the necessary progress in that environment.

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