The latest secondary school league tables do not make for happy reading, but heads say it’s because the goalposts have been moved. 

FEWER students across Swindon are achieving the top GCSE results compared to last year, according to the latest performance league tables released by the Department for Education (DfE).

However, a Swindon headteacher group said the tables contain ‘little accuracy’ due to the DfE’s decision only to accept students’ first entry exam results, rather than their best entry.

The change means some students who sat their GCSEs earlier than their peers and then chose to take it again later to improve their results, only had their first exam result included in the data.

Steve Colledge, chairman of SASH (Swindon Association of Secondary Heads), said: “The Department for Education league tables do not show an accurate view of schools’ performance this year.

“Parents would be advised to take a look at the more accurate schoolperformancetables.org.uk, which provides ‘best entry’ information and therefore shows the results students left Year 11 with, rather than only some of them.

“In early October 2013, the DfE announced that only first entry into an examination would count in the League Table for 2014 results and not ‘best entry’.

“Many schools had already committed to entering students into maths and/or English more than once and had informed parents of this. The DfE announcement was far too late with the first examinations only a few weeks away at the time.

“Entering students into these examinations more than once has proven very effective in enabling them to learn from mistakes in revision and to be able to inspire further success.

“There is therefore little accuracy in what these tables contain, no true picture in relation to the student experience and the grades they have achieved individually.”

The latest league tables, which were published yesterday, show how every school and college in England performed at GCSE, A-level and other academic and vocational qualifications in 2014.

They also indicate that dozens of secondaries across the country have seen their results plummet to zero because some combinations of English GCSEs and some IGCSEs do not count in the rankings this year.

Even the top performing schools in Swindon had fewer youngsters achieving five or more A* to C grades in 2014 according to the league tables, with Nova Hreod propping up the list, with only 31 per cent of students achieving the gold standard.

Darren Barton, principal at the academy, said: “Since last summer, we have put in place a series of important initiatives to ensure we can drive up improvement at pace across the school. Everyone at Nova is committed to these changes and this week we received very encouraging results for our IGCSE English which suggest that the new approach is working.”

Meanwhile, St Joseph’s Catholic College students achieved the benchmark, with 67 per cent of youngsters still making the grade, as they did last year.

But only 63 per cent of students at the Ridgeway School and 65 per cent of students at Highworth Warneford achieved the benchmark, compared to 70 per cent of students at both schools last year.

Nevertheless, 77 per cent of students achieved five A* to C's in their best entry results - a record acheiviement.  Meanwhile best entry results at Warneford saw 72 per cent of youngsters achieving the same.

Jerry Giles, deputy principal at St Joseph’s, said: “At St Joseph’s Catholic College, the very impressive results achieved by Year 11 last year clearly reflect the hard work and commitment of the students, their parents, and all their teachers here in the college.

“While the league tables published this year may not present a complete picture of the attainment of all year 11 students in all the courses they studied, it is clear that there were a high number of individual success stories in this year group both here at St Joseph’s and across Swindon.”

Teachers have said it is not fair to compare schools like for like, nor their rankings year-on-year, and critics would be better placed to compare schools according to pupils’ progress in a given period.

Clive Zimmerman, headteacher at Lydiard Park Academy, said: “Actually, my take on the tables is that they are quite useful.

“However, this measure takes no account of the fact that different schools have different catchment areas and because of this there are some schools in the Swindon list that realistically have no chance of ever being top in this particular table.

“The tables really should be rank ordered by ‘progress’ as this measures the job that schools do with the pupils they are given, and this is more of a level playing field.

“We’re top of that one and I’m far prouder of this than being second in the 5+EM table because this is about the progress of every child, not just those than can get C grades or above.”

Teaching unions have criticised this year’s tables, claiming that they are an ineffective way to rank and monitor school performance.

Andy Woolley, South West Regional Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said: “League tables are a ridiculous way to judge schools. Stark statistics cannot and do not reflect the whole work of a school. They are rendered even more pointless when you have a Government that continually changes the criteria on which schools are judged.

“Many good schools fall in the bottom half of the tables because they serve poorer communities.”

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) agreed, with Dr Mary Bousted, the general secretary, saying league tables were “too crude a measure of how well a school or college performs”.

“The fall in GCSE grades is due, in part, to counting only the first GCSE grade rather than the best grade, to the removal of the speaking and listening element from the English grades, plus changes to the way that vocational qualifications were counted,” she said.

Meanwhile teachers’ union NAHT says the Government’s chopping and changing of the system makes them an inadequate performance measure.

Russell Hobby, general secretary, said: “Data on school performance can be useful if used with caution, but today’s adverse statistics are due to the Government’s constant changes to leagues tables and provide no indication of the actual performance of schools over time. We have seen so many changes to league tables in recent years that it becomes impossible to compare year to year or school to school.”

According to analysis more than 300 schools fell beneath the Government's floor target this year after failing to ensure that enough pupils gained five good GCSE grades and made decent progress in the basics.

But the DfE said the drop in performance is down to two key reforms – only accepting student’s first attempt in the performance tables and stripping poor quality vocational qualifications out of the rankings.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: “For too long pupils were offered courses of no value to them and schools felt pressured to enter young people for exams before they were ready. By stripping out thousands of poor quality qualifications and removing resits from tables some schools have seen changes in their standings.

“But fundamentally young people’s achievement matters more than being able to trumpet ever higher grades.”

94% success rate already for this year 

NOVA Hreod students are among those who have already sat iGCSE exams – which will count in the next secondary school performance league tables.

Nearly all 127 of the Year 11 cohort who took the exam – 94 per cent – achieved A* to C grades in the subject, with the majority (66 per cent) achieving a B or higher.

In total, 21 students achieved the gold standard with an A or A* grade.
Darren Barton, principal of Nova Hreod Academy, said: “I am exceptionally proud of our students. 

“They worked incredibly hard to prepare for this exam and were supported brilliantly by the English faculty. 

“It is great for everyone at Nova to receive recognition that the changes we have put in place are working; and working quickly.

“This success gives us a real boost in advance of the full examination period later in the year and means we are very much on course to better recent results.”

The students’ success is a marker of the rapid progress students are now making at the academy, since 42 per cent of those sitting the exam exceeded the amount of progress the Government expects them to be making, compared to an average of 30 per cent nationally.

IGCSEs are an internationally recognised version of the GCSE, backed by Cambridge University and taken by a third of Year 11 students in England.

However, some iGCSE exams were excluded from data used to compile the secondary school league tables by the Department for Education.

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