No going back from English league tables

Making an informed choice Schools may hate them, but English parents have come to expect them. Geraldine Hackett looks at the consequences of ranking schools by results

Schools hate them, but no government minister in England - of any political party - would dare to abolish league tables. For more than a decade, parents in England have been able to compare the exam results of the schools they have in mind for their children and it is the kind of information they now expect to be given.

Teachers complain the tables only tell you whether a school is in a middle-class area or a run-down part of the inner city. The schools with good results are those taking middle-class children with parents who care about their progress. And, to some extent, that is true.

Schools with higher levels of social problems do find it harder to operate when parents have information about exam results, because parents, where they can, move their children out of schools that have poor results.

But league tables also expose those schools that have no excuse for poor results. Since 1992, when the first league table of secondary schools appeared, head teachers have worked hard to improve their place in the list. Many of those with the worst results have closed. Any school that returns unacceptable results for three years in a row has little chance of staying open.

The tables tell you more than exam results; they also tell parents the level of truancy.

Parents don't just judge a school by its exam results. They can also read its inspection report. Schools get inspected roughly every five years when independent inspectors spend a week observing teachers in classes rating their effectiveness. The inspectors report on the quality of teaching, the standards reached by pupils and the effectiveness of management, giving a view about how well a school is run and whether it represents value for money.

League tables and inspections were brought in to make schools more accountable. Their introduction reflected a view that standards in state schools were not high enough and letting people know which schools were the worst might bring about improvements. And while there is inevitably some unfairness - some schools that offer high standards of teaching will never be top of the league table - they have provided information for parents who want the best for their children. They have also boosted, by thousands of pounds, the price of property in areas with highly-ranked schools.

To get their children into the best schools, British parents either hire private tutors so their children pass the exam for a grammar school or they move into the catchment area of a comprehensive with good results. (Only about 7 per cent of families send their children to private schools, which are very expensive. A prestigious London day school costs more than £10,000 a year and boarding can top £20,000).

In the last couple years, the British government has published value-added tables in an attempt to be fairer to schools that take children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The tables are constructed to show the schools that have performed well once account has been taken of the different ability levels of the pupils they admitted.

In the main, the new-style tables have not been a great success. Many of those schools that top the raw results league table, also top the value-added table. Grammar schools top the raw tables and the value-added one. The exercise has been hugely expensive, because the results of individual pupils have to be tracked through the system.

Parents, anyway, are mainly interested in the raw tables. The stakes are high. A raft of good exam results opens the door to a leading university.

The arrival of league tables has meant that in parts of London and Birmingham, middle-class parents move house rather than send their child to the local comprehensive.

Opinion is divided as to whether the advantages of league tables, outweigh the disadvantages. The gap between the best and the poorest schools has widened. There is probably greater polarisation in terms of social class. Only the well-off can move home to be near a good school. The government is, however, putting resources into the schools with the worst results.

For governments, there is little to gain from such openness about schools. It is very costly to inspect schools every five years. The focus on results reminds parents that standards in many schools are far too low.

Schools don't get better because their exam results are published - though you can close the worst - it requires better trained and better paid teachers.

At secondary level, private schools continue to outperform state schools, though their charges mean they are accessible only to the wealthy. Almost half the students admitted to Oxford and Cambridge universitites have been educated privately. The leading universities are being urged by Charles Clarke, the British education minister, to broaden their social mix, but they claim they do not get enough suitably qualified applicants from state schools.

Private schools sell themselves on the basis of their ranking in the league tables. These days, even Eton requires boys to get a decent score at Common Entrance, the exam boys sit to gain a place. It can't risk taking boys who might not contribute to the school's standing in the league table.

Head teachers are never going to like league tables. They still complain about them because they create competition between schools. But there is no going back. Parents expect to get this information. Newspapers publish the tables every autumn and even though, over the years, they have become less of an event, parents read them so they can mak'e informed choices about schools. They know that a school in a difficult area will not produce the same results as one in wealthy suburb, but they can judge whether it is doing well when all factors are taken into account.