League Tables and Cup Matches

Today sees the publication in most of the press of this year's school "league tables", ranking exam performance in schools across the country and singling out the best, and worst, performers. But how important are these league tables to parents? And how important should they be?

A survey this spring by MORI for ISC (the Independent Schools Council information service - formerly ISIS) explored how parents sending their children to private schools choose between them, and why they do so in the first place. Just over a quarter of the parents, 28%, said that they used league tables as a source of information when they started thinking about which school they should send their child to, and 35% found them very or fairly useful in making their final decision; but far more were influenced by visits to the school, brochures and word of mouth -- both from friends or relatives or from other parents. (87% found school visits very or fairly useful, 75% said the same about brochures and prospectuses and 74% about word of mouth from other parents.) So in the private sector league tables are a factor, but not an over-riding one, for all that they convey objective measurements of success. In the state sector, presumably, where parents usually have less complete freedom of choice between schools, their influence may be equally muted.

A MORI survey for the Adam Smith Institute in March, published in the booklet "The Wrong Package" by Madsen Pirie and Sir Robert Worcester, asked the public (including those without children at school) to say what targets they believed schools should be prioritising to ensure a high standard of education.

Q Which two or three of these, if any, would you say it is important for schools to do to ensure a high standard of education for British children?

Q And which two or three, if any, would you say are least important?