I firmly believe that parents have a right to know how well their child's current, or future, school is performing compared to national and local benchmarks.
How that information is presented is a matter for debate. Some would like league tables, others, like the Education Minister Leighton Andrews would prefer "school grading". Personally, I lean towards the latter.
On Friday BBC Wales published a de-facto "league table", based on figures obtained by a freedom of information request. However it was based on only one single set of statistics, called "value added score" where schools receive a higher score if pupils perform better than expected in GCSE exams based on the school's contribution.
Presumably, that means if a pupil is expecting to get a single E grade GCSE, but gets 2 D grades, the school has an improved "value added score". Likewise, if in another school a pupil is expecting 6 A*'s only gets 4 A's, the school has underperformed and the value added score is reduced.
Cowbridge Comprehensive - regarded as one of the best state secondary schools in Wales, where almost 94% of pupils received 5 or more GCSE's grade A*-C in 2009-10 - is ranked 97th on this league table. Cynffig Comprehensive - where innovate approaches have been taken to boost the (what was appalling) 5 A*-C pass rate - has gone flying to 1st place.
There's no question that the schools at the top of the table have improved massively, and deserve credit. Perhaps there are even lessons the so-called "better" schools can learn from them. However, there's more to measuring school performance than just the value added, no matter how robust the measure is considered.
By publishing just one set of statistics in this manner, the BBC has reduced it to a simplistic, confusing (for parents), even misleading headline-grabbing set of random numbers.
I don't like to defend the WLGA and teaching unions but in this case they're absolutely right to vent some steam.
How that information is presented is a matter for debate. Some would like league tables, others, like the Education Minister Leighton Andrews would prefer "school grading". Personally, I lean towards the latter.
On Friday BBC Wales published a de-facto "league table", based on figures obtained by a freedom of information request. However it was based on only one single set of statistics, called "value added score" where schools receive a higher score if pupils perform better than expected in GCSE exams based on the school's contribution.
Presumably, that means if a pupil is expecting to get a single E grade GCSE, but gets 2 D grades, the school has an improved "value added score". Likewise, if in another school a pupil is expecting 6 A*'s only gets 4 A's, the school has underperformed and the value added score is reduced.
Cowbridge Comprehensive - regarded as one of the best state secondary schools in Wales, where almost 94% of pupils received 5 or more GCSE's grade A*-C in 2009-10 - is ranked 97th on this league table. Cynffig Comprehensive - where innovate approaches have been taken to boost the (what was appalling) 5 A*-C pass rate - has gone flying to 1st place.
There's no question that the schools at the top of the table have improved massively, and deserve credit. Perhaps there are even lessons the so-called "better" schools can learn from them. However, there's more to measuring school performance than just the value added, no matter how robust the measure is considered.
By publishing just one set of statistics in this manner, the BBC has reduced it to a simplistic, confusing (for parents), even misleading headline-grabbing set of random numbers.
I don't like to defend the WLGA and teaching unions but in this case they're absolutely right to vent some steam.
