§ 12. Mr. Harry GreenwayTo ask the Secretary of State for Education what plans she has to introduce further school league tables; and if she will make a statement.
§ Mr. ForthMy right hon. Friend intends to publish the national curriculum assessment results for 11-year-olds in national school performance tables once the assessment arrangements for this age group are satisfactorily established. Full consultation will be undertaken in due course on the presentation of the data.
§ Mr. GreenwayDoes my hon. Friend agree that it would be best not to try to dress up school league tables with subjective and therefore dangerous value added judgments? Will not a Rolls-Royce always be a Rolls-Royce and a Mini always a Mini? How can objectivity, which is vital, be achieved in that important area?
§ Mr. ForthMy hon. Friend is correct in saying that it would be quite wrong to seek to massage or tweak the published performance data on schools to try to conceal bad performance. However, I think that there is broad agreement that an appropriate and factual measure of value added by schools is something towards which we are working and which we would probably envisage implementing in stages over the next few years. Nevertheless, I must not underestimate the difficulties. The recent report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by the Schools, Curriculum and Assessment Authority brought out rather well the difficulties and the potential in that area and we are working towards that end.
§ Mr. MillerThe Minister seems to recognise that it is necessary to ensure that one is comparing apples with apples. Does he agree that schools such as Cambridge Road school in my constituency, which has inadequate playing facilities, and John Street school, which is in a battle with the community action programme about the availability of classrooms, are disadvantaged? Should not his priority be to correct that disadvantage before seeking to make comparisons?
§ Mr. ForthI certainly hope that the local education authority would make a priority of such schools. That is something on which everyone could agree. However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that we 765 should somehow excuse or explain away inadequate school performance simply because of difficulties in respect of premises or location. The truth, and the real giveaway here, is that many schools in difficult and deprived areas operating in difficult circumstances are producing magnificent results year after year. We want to find out how they do that and then make sure that everyone else does the same.
§ Mr. JenkinIs not the vital point about league tables not so much the quality of the analysis as the fact that they make schools concentrate on outcomes rather than inputs? If we had concentrated more on outcomes over the past 20 years, would we not have a better education system?
§ Mr. ForthYes. My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We are now reaching the stage at which most people in education are at long last looking at outcomes, results and achievements and are no longer obsessed with how much money is required to produce those results. Money is and always will be important, but the main requirements and factors affecting educational performance have nothing whatever to do with money.