U-turn over school grading

Education ministers had been planning to introduce the new progress measure in school performance tables due out in December but have been forced to U-turn under national pressure.

The new system would have compared grades in national curriculum tests for 14-year-olds with pupils scores in GCSEs, then graded schools from A to E on improvements. Each school was then to have received a grade from A to E, depending on the level of improvement between the two sets of results.

But heads in Oxfordshire had voiced fears about the system, claiming that schools whose pupils performed particularly well at the age of 14 could be penalised.

Members of the Oxfordshire Secondary School Headteachers Association wrote to the Government claiming that the system was seriously flawed. Association chairman Chris Bryan , head at St Birinus School, Didcot, and chairman of the association, who led the campaign against the new grades, said : many schools in the county would be relieved by the decision.

He said: "Schools with pupils who performed well at the age of 14 and also did well at GCSE were being graded C, D or E. The grade allocated to a school had more to do with the number of subjects taken by each pupil at GCSE rather than the progress which had been made.

"We asked the government to rethink. At first they would not change their minds but they now realise just how unfair the grades would be on schools throughout the country."

Mr Bryan's own school was due to have received the modest grade of C in the new 'progress measure' rating even though the proportion of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grade A to C last year climbed to 45 per cent from 29 per cent the previous year.

Instead of receiving grades as a measure of their progress, schools that would have received A or B, will receive a tick in the revised tables.

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