The government’s GCSE league tables are being scrutinised by the country’s statistics regulator to ensure they comply with national standards.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is currently assessing the way the Department for Education publishes information about students’ results at key stage 4 and is set to produce its findings in a report due in July.
The regulator has said that its work will check whether recommendations are needed to ensure that the DfE is complying with the national Code of Practice for Statistics.
It is looking at both national performance data and school league tables.
This routine assessment of key stage 4 performance data comes amid concerns among school leaders about the reintroduction of school-level league tables this year.
School league tables have not been produced since the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020 but will be published later this year following the return of GCSE and A-level exams.
Steve Rollett, the Confederation of Schools Trust’s deputy chief executive, told Tes last month that the UK Statistics Authority may need to play a role to ensure tables are “fit for purpose this year due to the differential impact of Covid-19”.
And Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said that school-level league tables should not be published at all this year because of Covid disruption.
However, the Department for Education has said it recognises that Covid has had an “uneven impact” on schools and that it will ensure clear messages are placed on performance tables to “advise caution” when considering the 2021-22 results.
‘Trustworthiness, quality and value’
The OSR - the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority - is carrying out its first routine assessment of key stage 4 performance data since 2014.
An OSR spokesperson said its findings and recommendations will be developed in line with “the three pillars of the Code of Practice for Statistics”: trustworthiness, quality and value.
The spokesperson said: “The feedback that we receive from users, alongside the documentation that the DfE provides, will determine whether we feel a recommendation is required to ensure compliance with the code.”
They added: “Our assessment will take into account the wider context of the national-level statistics, and we would encourage the department to apply our findings for the national-level statistics to the school-level statistics.”
The OSR is asking people who access the league tables a series of questions, including: “How clear is the advice from the DfE about the strengths and limitations of the statistics?”
It will also ask what people valued in the statistics before the pandemic, and what they would like to see after the pandemic.
The OSR has produced a questionnaire which runs until the end of this week in which people can give their views about the DfE’s key stage 4 performance data.
