What is the impact on schools of league tables published by the press?
5.1 Where a school finds itself positioned in a league table can have a huge impact on the ease with which it recruits staff and, of course, on the school’s self esteem and ‘reputation’ (certainly moving down a league table can have an immediate effect on perceptions of the school’s ability to educate and lead (unfairly) to reduced student numbers as parents opt for other schools). 5.2 Many parents (and teachers) use the published statistics without reference to (or any understanding of) the uncertainty built into the league tables, so there is a pressure on schools to do whatever it takes to make the number bigger. At the very least, the effect is that, in an effort to not miss targets, schools increasingly teach to the test rather than teach for understanding. 6. How useful is this information to stakeholders, particularly parents? 6.1 There is a strongly held view by some that parents actually have very little choice as to which school to send their children to in many parts of the
