WE have been concerned for many months about the poor education our children – particularly those in the city – have been receiving, based on results at primary and secondary school.

On the face of it, the academic achievement of special needs children within the category called School Action Plus would fall within that issue as they are once again below the national results for their ‘peers’.

With previous results, some of Oxfordshire County Council’s excuses were grasping at straws, in our view. Yet with special needs children’s education it does make a very good point: you can’t really compare these results because different areas adopt different standards to classify these pupils.

Oxfordshire, it claims, has a ‘higher’ threshold for those it deems as requiring special needs education than other areas. Therefore those children are likely to get worse results than those in other areas if their needs are not as severe.

The public sector is weighed down by a lot of meaningless league tables, but in this instance the system should be reviewed.

How can it ensure that these vulnerable children are getting the most appropriate education if local education authorities are doing different things?