Why are school league tables bad?

Zaph0d

I would have thought that it was a good thing for the public to know which schools perform well and which need help but I've never met anyone who agreed with me.

The education act 1998 s53 grants the minister the right to refuse freedom of information requests that might lead to this information being analysed.

I can see plenty of reasons why this information should be public but I can't think of any why not. So what's the reason?

simu

They give too simplistic a view - a fee-paying school full of middle-class kids will obviously have higher average points than a school in a disadvanaged area because it's not an even playing ground.

John_C

simu wrote:

They give too simplistic a view - a fee-paying school full of middle-class kids will obviously have higher average points than a school in a disadvanaged area because it's not an even playing ground.

But surely some information is better than no information.

samb

The fear is that everyone will try to go to the best schools and that other schools will suffer as a result. Teachers and schools will focus to much on the exams rather than a broader sense of education. Why teach or learn if its not on the exam.

fly_agaric

double post:o
edited second one and added some stuff.

fly_agaric

Zaph0d wrote:

I would have thought that it was a good thing for the public to know which schools perform well and which need help but I've never met anyone who agreed with me.

The education act 1998 s53 grants the minister the right to refuse freedom of information requests that might lead to this information being analysed.

I can see plenty of reasons why this information should be public but I can't think of any why not. So what's the reason?

Yeah, school league tables will provide parents with "choice"*

*terms and conditions attached - you must have the money to send your child to a private school or move house to be close to excellent non-private ones!

I wonder what will happen to the rest when all the parents who are committed to their childrens education and have the money to choose self-segregate their kids into the best schools?

Do you think it will improve the education system? I suppose it depends on what people think "improvement" is?

As for knowing which schools need help - I'd say the teachers and the parents with children in the schools in question, and of course the Department itself know what is needed. How do school league tables make it any more likely that the schools will get what they need?

Zombrex

Zaph0d wrote:

I would have thought that it was a good thing for the public to know which schools perform well and which need help but I've never met anyone who agreed with me.

It turns schools into a business, where getting a high league position is more important than improving the education of the children. You see this in the states where schools lower exam standards to make it look like their children are all straight A students.

It is far far to simplistic a system to gadge the progress of a school or of the schools children. It also leads to a situtation where schools compete against each other for students and funds, which is bad for students.

bonkey

Zaph0d wrote:

I would have thought that it was a good thing for the public to know which schools perform well and which need help but I've never met anyone who agreed with me
....
I can see plenty of reasons why this information should be public but I can't think of any why not. So what's the reason?

I notice that you see plenty of reasons, but you don't iterate a single one....whilst asking those who disagree with you to provide reasons rather than simply stating their position as you have done.

I can't see any benefit to the public in making teh information public at all. Note - I am not saying that some people could not make gainful use of the information, but rather that the public as a whole would be no better off in any way that I can see.

jc

bonkey

Wicknight wrote:

You see this in the states where schools lower exam standards to make it look like their children are all straight A students.

Surely, though, league tables would be based on such things as junior/leaving certificate results, rather than on internal exams that are effectively meaningless in a broader context?

Diorraing

The league tables are pointless as they aren't about the amount of points pupils got but how many went on to college. It doesn't include students who go on to study primary teaching in places like Marino or Pats or students who go on to learn a trade. This year St Conleth's came top of the table - in a year of 30 everyone went to college. Most of these students could have got 200 points and done courses in some colleges. In another school maybe 60 students out of 80 went to college, and those who did got above 400 points.
The League system actually tells us nothing - except that more pupils from private schools go on to third level but there are reasons for that other than the schooling

ISAW

fly_agaric wrote:

Yeah, school league tables will provide parents with "choice"*

Choise of what? What do they measure? You are only taking into account the results that pupils from certain schools get in their leaving certificate. Is that a "better" school? How many of the schools with the most As and Bs in Leaving Cert have footbalo teams? How many do swimming? How many special needs pupils do they have and how many disable pupils? How many pupils were over fifty years of age?

Do you want to choose a society where you can avoid the old, the poor the disabled the sick and the handicapped? People have tried that before.

*terms and conditions attached - you must have the money to send your child to a private school or move house to be close to excellent non-private ones!

I wonder what will happen to the rest when all the parents who are committed to their childrens education and have the money to choose self-segregate their kids into the best schools?

I wonder what your opinion is on that? What exactly makes up a "better" school? Or the "best"?

Do you think it will improve the education system? I suppose it depends on what people think "improvement" is?

This is a very insightful comment. What would you consider "an improvement"?

As for knowing which schools need help - I'd say the teachers and the parents with children in the schools in question, and of course the Department itself know what is needed. How do school league tables make it any more likely that the schools will get what they need?

Well if league tables are really only a list of what small percentage got the A plus exam results then of course that is all they are measuring. The problem is that people attach such importance to A plus academic achievement. One can have a knowledge base without attaching such importance. There are other ways to study for a degree. Maybe it is associated with the university entrance system?

Plastic Scouser

I don't know an awful lot about the education system in Ireland, but I can tell you a negative effect that the publishing of league tables has had in England....

If you can't afford to pay for your child's education (or maybe you can but choose not to) then in most cases you are obviously going to have to 'apply' for your kids to attend a local state-run comprehensive.

If there are 3 state schools nearby for me to choose from and me & my parents see from the league tables that 1 appears to be performing tons better than the others then that's likely to be the one I apply for.

A little while goes by and I get my letter telling me which secondary school I've been allocated - it's not my first choice (the one performing better in the league tables), or even my second choice, in fact it's my third choice - the school that is bottom of the league in my area!

Now the other schools are full so I could try appealing but that probably wouldn't matter anyway. So I have to go to this 'crap' school.

Now I'm worried about how 'rubbish' it is already and my parents are freaked out. Surely my life is over now, my future is doomed because I'll never even pass 1 GCSE in such a school!

........Therefore these league tables panic parents (& kids) unneccessarily imo, and have them believe that the school their kid goes to will determine the rest of their lives! This is balls!!

I went to a 'crap' state school myself (don't think we had league tables at the time, but recently I noticed that it's pretty much bottom in the area), however if you have good support from your parents (i.e. they encourage you to be good, read your books & do your homework or whatever) and you are keen on getting good results anyway then you'll be fine no matter what school you go to.

Zaph0d

bonkey wrote:

I notice that you see plenty of reasons, but you don't iterate a single one....whilst asking those who disagree with you to provide reasons rather than simply stating their position as you have done.

I don't have a very firm view on it but reasons would include the general principle that the state should not keep secret information about the performance of the services it provides to the public, that rich kids go to rich schools with or without league tables, that protecting basic data like literacy rates at school leaving age is an attempt to hide the utter failure of the worst schools. I guess that it prevents public debate from happening about how to improve schools when you've no idea how they're doing. Should the state continue grant aiding private schools? Should schools that underperform for years be closed? Or given more money or better teachers?

Are bad schools all bad because they have poor pupils or is it sometimes related to the mangement and teachers? Who knows?

From looking at the replies I guess the main reason against league tables is that it would increase competition amongst schools and make the divisions deeper between them as the good kids all headed off to the better performing places.

samb

Zaph0d wrote:

Are bad schools all bad because they have poor pupils or is it sometimes related to the mangement and teachers? Who knows?
.

I think this is an important point. The biggest factor that determines a childs success is their attitude towards accademic sucess. This IMO is determined by there family and importantly thier PEERS. League tables will only create a greater divide between private and public schools.

All parents want the best for their children and will therefore be forced to sent them to private schools (assuming they can afford it) if all other children who have a respect for education are going to them.

I went to both a private and a public school and from that experience could not see any difference in success. Any divide that does exist, however, would be exacerbated by league tables.

It also will put pressure on parents to sent their children to private schools, even though the difference in performance is largely due to the socio-economic background of the pupils.

Plastic Scouser

Zaph0d wrote:

the state should not keep secret information about the performance of the services it provides to the public.....it prevents public debate from happening about how to improve schools when you've no idea how they're doing

I don't accept this argument really as schools have been inspected for as long as I can remember and a report published on the results of such an inspection.*

This report typically includes information about the school, what the school does well, what it needs to improve etc. These reports are available on the ofsted website so anyone can see them.

IMO this is a much better indicator of how a school is doing - and a much better way of sharing information re your quote - than publishing league tables, which will always show certain (nearly always fee-paying) schools as better in terms of points or whatever, and not tell you anything else about the school!

[*Again I can only go from what I know about the English system so apologies if this is very different to the Irish system!]

John_C

The main argument against league tables that I can see is that they'll stigmatise the schools with poor results and may even make them worse. This, I think is a compelling argument and the solution (obviously) is to sort out whatever problems exist in these schools, irrespective of wheather league tables are produced or not. Hiding the problem by not publishing the figures does not fix the problem.

Other arguments against, such as that league tables don't tell you wheather a school has a swimming team or that league tables will turn schools into results factories without an holistic education, don't hold much water in my opinion. Schools are already under pressure from the exams to get results and they still manage to give the kids a good education. The number of grind schools in this country is very small so shouldn't have a huge bearing on the argument (and in any case if a parent chooses to send their child there, that's their choice).
Schools are more that happy to show off their sports teams and other cultural activities so there is no need for the government to publish that type of information, parents already have it.
Also, I don't necessaraly accept the assumption that fee-paying schools will fill the top of the list. I live in south dublin so I've probably 20 or 30 schools within cycling distance of my house and it's commonly accepted that the best school in the area is the local (free) irish speaking girls' school.

I also think that the discussion here is a bit simplistic. You don't simply have good and bad schools or good and bad pupils. Schools, like children, have different strengts and weaknesses and parents will want to match these as well as possible. If (to take an obvious example) a child can speak fluent Irish, the parents will want to know wheather that school gets good results in Irish where the top class has the ability to study literature and drama or wheather the school is weak at Irish and the child will be stuck in a class where the pupils are simply rote learning spelling and grammer.

I think that the best solution would be for the school reports to not be published centrally but be available to pick up in a leaflet from each school. That way a parent choosing between schools in the area will have the full information but a journalist will not have the resources to get every report to publish a table.

Zaph0d

Plastic Scouser wrote:

I don't accept this argument really as schools have been inspected for as long as I can remember and a report published on the results of such an inspection.*

This report typically includes information about the school, what the school does well, what it needs to improve etc. These reports are available on the ofsted website so anyone can see them.

In Ireland these reports are carried out every four years and are also secret. This was affirmed by a supreme court decision last year.

John_C wrote:

You don't simply have good and bad schools or good and bad pupils. Schools, like children, have different strengts and weaknesses and parents will want to match these as well as possible.

How would you describe a school where most of the 16 year olds can't read or write beyond 6-8 year old levels? I've been in such a school and I got the impression that the teachers had given up. You'll have to take my word for it because the details are top secret.

samb wrote:

The biggest factor that determines a childs success is their attitude towards accademic sucess. This IMO is determined by there family and importantly thier PEERS.

In the absence of data this has to be speculation.

Plastic Scouser

John_C wrote:

the solution (obviously) is to sort out whatever problems exist in these schools, irrespective of wheather league tables are produced or not. Hiding the problem by not publishing the figures does not fix the problem.

Well, I definitely agree that problems facing certain schools should be fixed, whether the general public get to see the effects of those problems in published reports/tables or not.

I'm just not sure that publishing the figures helps to solve any of the problems. I'm still not really sure what the benefits of publishing league tables are at all actually?!

John_C wrote:

I also think that the discussion here is a bit simplistic. You don't simply have good and bad schools or good and bad pupils. Schools, like children, have different strengts and weaknesses and parents will want to match these as well as possible.

I think that's a fair point, but one of my reservations about league tables is that they seem to reinforce the idea to parents that there is a general 'best' school and that therefore they wouldn't want their kids to attend the schools further down the table i.e. the parents forget this idea of matching the right school to their own child's abilities/interests and get hung up on getting their child into the 'best' school.

John_C wrote:

I think that the best solution would be for the school reports to not be published centrally but be available to pick up in a leaflet from each school. That way a parent choosing between schools in the area will have the full information but a journalist will not have the resources to get every report to publish a table.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea to me.

fly_agaric

ISAW wrote:

Choice of what? What do they measure? You are only taking into account the results that pupils from certain schools get in their leaving certificate. Is that a "better" school? How many of the schools with the most As and Bs in Leaving Cert have footbalo teams? How many do swimming? How many special needs pupils do they have and how many disable pupils? How many pupils were over fifty years of age?

I concentrated on academic results because that is the little bit of information that people really care about when it comes to lobbying for these kind of league tables. If we ever have some kind of state assessment in primary school no doubt parents will want a tabular breakdown of school results of that too.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but mentioning the fact that tables may include data on schools' extracurricular activities, inclusion of the disabled, ethos etc is just a nice figleaf for people to say - "look-see, I care about more than points and academic success!". Of course, the schools that will excel in these areas (except perhaps inclusion of disabled/special needs pupils) will also tend to be the ones with the most dedicated and wealthiest parents.
If league tables come in here and give these kind of details but omit exam results I'd say they will be of limited interest to parents.

ISAW wrote:

Do you want to choose a society where you can avoid the old, the poor the disabled the sick and the handicapped? People have tried that before.

Well, if data on disabled and mentally handicapped children in schools is included I'm sure many parents will try to avoid putting their (non-disabled) darlings in any school that seems to have more than its fair share. Especially if the govt. isn't providing adequate extra help to the schools for such pupils.

ISAW wrote:

I wonder what will happen to the rest when all the parents who are committed to their childrens education and have the money to choose self-segregate their kids into the best schools?

I wonder what your opinion is on that? What exactly makes up a "better" school? Or the "best"?

My opinion is that parents that are very committed to their childrens' education are very important to a school. If a school doesn't have any such parents it may be very difficult to counter the deficit with extra government money for teachers and facilities. If such parents (who can afford it of course - those who are committed but can't stump up the money are stuck) end up concentrated in particular schools the rest of the system suffers (both ethos in the schools and success of the children who attend them).

I don't work in primary or secondary education and don't have kids so take this with a big grain of salt, but...

A "better" school (imho) would be one that discovers and develops the talents (academic and other) of the children that attend it and gets the resources it needs from the government to do this job well, without being smotherered by excessive bureaucratic bull.
It would include a cross-section of society and ability (just like the world outside the school) - but not to the extent that the problems of any one child have an excessive impact on the others. It would be the attitude of the parents who are interested and really care about their childrens' schooling and consider it quite important for their future life that would dominate in the school.

ISAW wrote:

This is a very insightful comment. What would you consider "an improvement"?

I don't think I know enough to answer this - but I really feel that league tables containing exam results for schools would be a disimprovement to the Irish education system for the reasons I and others have given.
I was contrasting that opinion with the attitude (which seems common in the media anyway) that tables with exam results are an improvement because they give parents more power over the education of their children.
They do this by introducing more of an element of the market into education than we have already. The problem is all users ("consumers") don't have equal abilities to choose. Their choices will be good for them but will have a cost for the system as a whole.

Others have also mentioned the way this market pressure might cause some schools to become more "grind-schooly" in their focus on good academic results and a high position on the meeja league tables.

Plastic Scouser

Zaph0d wrote:

In Ireland these reports are carried out every four years and are also secret. This was affirmed by a supreme court decision last year.

Oh. I didn't know that - apologies!

Maybe making these reports available would solve the 'problem' of information on schools performance being 'top-secret' without having to resort to league tables then.

Zaph0d wrote:

How would you describe a school where most of the 16 year olds can't read or write beyond 6-8 year old levels? I've been in such a school and I got the impression that the teachers had given up. You'll have to take my word for it because the details are top secret

I'd be inclined to agree. I don't think it's necessarily too simplistic to view some schools as 'bad'. I attended what people might consider to be a 'bad' secondary school - however as I didn't have an alternative but to go there, knowing that my school was bottom of some league wouldn't have helped me, or any of the other students, one bit!

I still don't really see how publishing league tables really benefits students! And shouldn't every change that is made to an education system be for the sole purpose of benefitting the students?!

(Or am I just an unrealistic hippy?!)

Plastic Scouser

fly_agaric wrote:

A "better" school (imho) would be one that.......

It would be the attitude of the parents who are interested and really care about their childrens' schooling and consider it quite important for their future life that would dominate in the school

I see where you're coming from there but would it be fair to exclude a child from this fictional school because their parents didn't give a damn about their education - even if that child was doing their best at school & working their hardest in spite of having disinterested parents?

Wouldn't you be discriminating against a 'good' student because of the actions of their parents? Do you think this is fair when one could argue that they are already at a disadvantage because they don't get support at home?

(Maybe I'm getting a bit off topic here? Apologies!)

fly_agaric

^No, you are right, it wouldn't be fair. This is all offtopic, but I was thinking more that the pupils who are badly behaved and parents who don't really give much of a toss about the education of their children shouldn't ever set the agenda in the school.

It's funny. Trying to answer that question (about a good or "better" school) was quite hard since there is a difficult balance between the right of all children to an be educated and the rights of the majority to get the most out of their education (which can be made less easy by the bad attitudes or problems of their peers and the parents).

Glad I'm not a teacher...:D

samb

Zaph0d wrote:

In the absence of data this has to be speculation.

Well it is my opinion based on experience, not just blind speculation. I remember having rubbish teachers for certian subjects in school but if we cared about doing well, we generally did. In Irish I had some good teachers but not the right attitude (which I now regret) and did badly. So I stick by my statement, and believe that it is crucial in this debate.

The biggest factor that determines a childs success is their attitude towards accademic sucess. This IMO is determined by there family and importantly thier PEERS.

ISAW

samb wrote:

I think this is an important point. The biggest factor that determines a childs success is their attitude towards accademic sucess. This IMO is determined by there family and importantly thier PEERS.

But academic achievment is not the only element of educaTION. Indeed one can argue that among peers it is LESS inmportant than musical ability or sporting prowess.

League tables will only create a greater divide between private and public schools.

If the private schools were not getting state funding them one might even see how well the public ones do! Why should the private schools benefit from their own "top up" fees on top of the state funding like the universities do? Why shouldn't the rich pay for their own education rather than getting grants from the rest of the people?

All parents want the best for their children and will therefore be forced to sent them to private schools (assuming they can afford it)

Yes but how do you know the "education" of a PLC grind mill is "better".

if all other children who have a respect for education are going to them.

Bu education is not about just academics! You have hit the kernel of the problem of standards in traditinal teacher/pupil lecture/classroom based education i.e. the level of disicipline among the students.

I went to both a private and a public school and from that experience could not see any difference in success. Any divide that does exist, however, would be exacerbated by league tables.

Much of the divide is invisible; the business and sports contacts made; the phraseology used; the attitude of being born to rule.

It also will put pressure on parents to sent their children to private schools, even though the difference in performance is largely due to the socio-economic background of the pupils.

Aye! There's the rub!

samb

I think ISAW that we are in total argeement on this issue, I didn't mean to over emphaisis acedemic success. In relation to League tables however it is the most relevant aspect of education.

I agree that the state should not fund private schools.

When I made the point about Peers, I did not mean that you get great honour or repect for academic success (like sports or music) but simply that your peers attitude will influence yours.

Flash Golden

I attend a public school. The shameful standard of teaching at times makes me mad.:mad: However, public schools in general have a more commited group of students attending them who want to do well. Naturally, their results are going to be higher then MOST public schools. So maybe it isn.t fair to publish league tables.

The real question is: Should teachers in public schools be paid as regards the performances of their pupils.

Stabshauptmann

Diorraing wrote:

The league tables are pointless as they aren't about the amount of points pupils got but how many went on to college. It doesn't include students who go on to study primary teaching in places like Marino or Pats or students who go on to learn a trade. This year St Conleth's came top of the table - in a year of 30 everyone went to college. Most of these students could have got 200 points and done courses in some colleges. In another school maybe 60 students out of 80 went to college, and those who did got above 400 points.
The League system actually tells us nothing - except that more pupils from private schools go on to third level but there are reasons for that other than the schooling

Those tables published in the sunday papers are the result of legislation prohibiting tables based on LC score.
Papers are using the only info available to them under the FoI, college enrollment.
But even if you were to produce a table based on LC points, how do you know pupils werent taking grinds - in which case the school cant claim redit for the results?

And what about sports? Culture and ethos? Some ppl value these.

I went to the best school in my area. Highest results, most respectable families, strong sports teams. It also had the biggest problem with drugs. Getting stoned at 1pm was common, heroine was being used by some. Tables cant tell you everything you need to know.

I think the current table is BS, and I *think* most people agree.

mloc

Flash Golden wrote:

However, public schools in general have a more commited group of students attending them who want to do well.

I agree. Having been to both public and private secondary schools, I can definately agree with this. In 6th year of a private school, half the students had decided by christmas they'd just take the rest of the year off and repeat, as they could afford to do this.

The majority of students in the public school, come 6th year, were committed to doing well and working hard to achieve as best they could.

TBH, in terms of education, I don't believe that public or private schools have much of an impact on the actual results of students, with the possible exception of exam-focused schools such as the institute. The individual teachers and students in the school are ultimately what decides results.

On an aside, the school in which i went to for 6th year (a very small school) came top of the league that year. I had the best leaving in my year, and therefore technically the I was the best student in Ireland. This, of course, is total BS. My school was so small that only a small amount of students needed to go to 3rd level to push percentages up. Noone in my year reached 600 points. In fact, out of the 28 students in my year, 3 years out of school, only 8 are in 3rd year of a college course, due to drop outs, repeating or whatever.