The Press on league tables

The Press reports:

There is a tinge of alarmism, even something slightly hysterical, in the opposition of the education establishment to the publication of the performance of primary schools as measured by national standards.

Unions, teachers and principals have been united for some time in trying to have such information withheld from public scrutiny. …

The answer to all the argument over national standards information is not to try to suppress it, but rather to release it along with as much other information as possible to try to give an accurate assessment of schools’ performance on which parents can safely rely.

Information about secondary schools’ National Certificate of Educational Achievement performance has been made public and the media have made league tables of them for several years now without any serious adverse consequences.

There is no reason why statistics on national standards should be treated any differently.

The response to “bad data” should be “good data” not censorship. Ideally we should have an online schools database like in Australia, where parents can look up and compare schools over a range of data.