GCSE tables blasted as 'useless'

Private schools today condemn "absurd" reforms to national school league tables.

The Government hopes that by rewarding state schools for offering more vocational qualifications with a boost in league table placing, they will cater for non-academic pupils.

But the Independent Schools Council said the reforms mean league tables are useless to parents. It said it should be compulsory for schools to report their achievement in the key subjects of English, maths, science and a foreign language.

The row overshadowed the publication of secondary school league tables today, which showed the Government suffered another embarrassing failure to meet key targets.

And the poor performance of some of Tony Blair's flagship city academies has put the programme in trouble. But there was good news for London as four boroughs - Hackney, Islington, Lambeth and Lewisham - are the fastest improving authorities in England.

The ISC said: "The new points score employed for 2004 results accords equivalent values to qualifications in cake decoration, pattern cutting and wired sugar flowers as to GCSEs in maths, English, science and modern languages. This is absurd.

"Not only can these tables not be compared with any previous published data about schools, they no longer tell parents anything valuable about the quality of a school's academic or vocational programme. This is not even a case of trying to compare apples and pears. It is comparing apples with candy floss."

The reforms, introduced partly as a sop to teachers who oppose league tables, mean that a distinction in the ABC cake decoration course is worth more points (55) than an A in an academic GCSE such as maths, English or physics. In future, schools that herd pupils into vocational courses could come out ahead of others that concentrate on improving performance in the three Rs, experts warned.

The proportion of 16-year-olds who got at least five A* to Cs rose 0.8 per cent from 52.9 per cent in 2003 to 53.7 per cent in 2004, the year covered by today's tables.

But the improvement would have been even smaller, at 0.7 per cent, if the new vocational qualifications had not been included. Three important targets were missed. The proportion of GCSE pupils who got at least five passes at grade G, including for English and maths, was supposed to reach 92 per cent in 2004.

But the actual figure declined 0.2 per cent to 86.4 per cent. At least 38 per cent of pupils were also supposed to get five Cs or better this year in every English local education authority but seven LEAs missed this target.

London schools achieved the Government's goal of a two per cent annual increase in the proportion of pupils getting at least five Cs at GCSE, reaching

52.9 per cent - but England as a whole missed that target.

Despite millions of pounds being poured into city academies, four out of the 11 that reported GCSE results this year are at the foot of the national tables. Two of the four academies are in London, including the capital's worst school for GCSE results.

At The Academy at Peckham, sponsored by carpet millionaire Lord Harris, only 12 per cent scored a minimum of five Cs. Principal Peter Crook insisted it was far too early to judge whether The Academy was a success or failure as it would take years to tackle the legacy of under-achievement left by Warwick Park, its predecessor.