Perhaps the most important attribute of any school leader is relentless optimism. Over the past year or so this has been severely tested, of course. But there has always been the hope that we can learn lessons from Covid-19, and get rid of some of the rubbish around education that holds us back from making real improvements to our children’s learning.

So, it was with great dismay that, one day last week, I opened the news feeds to find that hard-working staff in schools across Scotland are still being judged against measures that mean little to their pupils, still being ranked from “best” to “worst” in a league table. Despite, for many years, being encouraged to talk to pupils about the basket of qualifications accumulated over the time they spend in the senior phase, the headlines are still dominated by how many Highers are gained at the end of S5. This is an outmoded measure clung to by desperate media outlets that fail to see the bigger picture.

Don’t get me wrong - the tables are not entirely useless. As a proxy measure for affluence against poverty, it stands up as a reliable index. But while the schools in the richer parts of our country wait with bated breath to see if they have made the top 20, those further down despair as the efforts they make on behalf of their children are ignored and considered to have no worth.

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Unless you are looking to become a doctor or a lawyer, why would you need five Highers by the end of S5? In my school, we often deliberately direct pupils towards four or even three Highers, in the knowledge that they will gain better grades, will be less stressed and will have a chance to pursue that language or creative subject they loved but gave up at the end of S2 or S3. They return in S6 to a much more worthwhile set of subjects, carrying on with more Highers and finishing with the grades they need to get into university and with a well-rounded portfolio of achievement.

Unfair school league tables

Others pursue much more vocational courses (which are ascribed no value at all in the league tables) and go on to apprenticeships or college or straight into work. This all contributes to our positive destinations figures (before the effects of Covid) consistently hanging around 94 per cent - similar to, or surpassed by, many of my fellow schools languishing at the bottom end of the five-plus Highers chart. We all know that, while there is always room for improvement in what we do, our students face huge challenges but, with our help, they go on to succeed in life after school.

And this is partly what makes the publishing of the league tables so upsetting. Every year our students and staff suffer from social media analysis of their “bad” school. It is both demoralising and hugely unfair to our excellent teachers and support staff who strive day in and out to help our children fight against the hand they have been dealt.

Like a number of things we have always done but that have been found wanting over the past year, it is time to deal the death blow to league tables. In the future, we should be talking up all the many and varied successes of our school leavers.

John Rutter is headteacher at Inverness High School