At the end of every academic year, there is the nervous excitement about examination results, be it IB Diploma, A Level, CBSE or any other major educational curriculum.

Students and parents are nervous about gaining university places; schools are nervous about achieving outstanding results for inspections.

And then there are the league tables, meaning schools get compared to each other on the crudest of statistics.

I understand that grades are important - often referred to as the “golden ticket” - and that these grades will stay on a CV for decades to come for others to judge us.

Can we compare fairly?

However, my concern is how we are compared to each other using simple raw numbers - a far too simplistic factor when comparing complex organisations like schools.

As a keen statistician, I spend hours slaving over an Excel spreadsheet, analysing the data provided by these results in the hope that I can find a way to improve our processes for next year.

Why? To manipulate our examination scores to appear better in league tables or marketing material?

No. I do it for the students.

Our job as school leaders is to provide the best educational experience for students and, yes, examination results are one part of this, but this process is about reflecting on ourselves and getting better at what we do each year, for the benefit of future cohorts.

Schools are so much more than examination results, or at least they should be. They are about people, relationships and context.

Is a school that achieves all A grades better than a school that gets all C grades?

A nuanced picture 

Maybe, but not necessarily. This is only one, simple metric and one that is too often the focus. How about if a student achieves a bilingual IB Diploma?

Isn’t that better, even if the total score is lower? How about if a student receives the IB Diploma with 24 points when nobody thought they could achieve it? Isn’t this a better result than a child receiving 30 points when they could have got 35?

How about a SEND or disadvantaged student getting 25 points? Is that worse than another student getting 28? Well, in a simple league table, it appears so.

If a school is taking the most academic students, of course, its grades will be higher - this should reflect on the good groundwork these other schools have done, but it doesn’t; the school where a student sat the examination takes the glory.

This focus on attainment makes schools only want to admit the strongest students, creating a fight for these students where integrity in schools is often lost. Education should be for all, regardless of their perceived ability.

Education is about so much more than results, but in the current competitive market, there is a desire to measure and compare schools and results are the easiest way to it. But what about happiness? Sporting, musical or performance opportunities?

How we measure progress

How do we measure this? It’s difficult. It won’t fit into a table therefore, it is ignored.

But progress is measurable. Taking a child’s initial performance and comparing this to their final performance gives an indication of how well a school is truly performing in an academic sense.

Progress is like the Roger Federer of statistics, compared to the Rafael Nadal of attainment measure - they’re both good, they both have a place, but one is a little more refined and technical than the other.

All schools should focus on their students making progress and if you really want to draw up a league table, then let’s do it based on progress, not just attainment.

Let’s also include in the debate more than just academic results.

Has a child become more confident? This is progress. Has a child tried something new and found a passion? This is progress. Has a child been able to feel pride in representing their school? This is progress.

These are the important things I look at as a parent, as well as a school leader.

Sadly though, at present, we are moving away from this view of education and towards one where league tables and school comparisons based on raw results are the be-all and end-all.

I urge schools, leaders and the media to change the narrative.

Let’s focus on student progress and our children will be better for it.

Ian Thurston is head of secondary at Dar al Marefa School, Dubai, UAE