HC Deb 14 July 1992 vol 211 cc560-1W
Mr. Byers

To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) how many responses were received to his Department's letter of 10 January consulting on the further implications of the parents charter; and how many of these responses were in favour of his Department analysing data and publishing performance tables in schools' comparative examination performance;

(2) to whom the work to analyse and produce comparative tables of school examination results has been contracted out;

(3) what estimate has been made of the cost of centrally managing the task of analysing and publishing comparative tables of school examination results; and what provision was made for this expenditure in the original estimate of his Department.

Mr. Forth

Ninety-five responses were received to the consultation letter on the phased implementation of parents charter proposals. The consultation letter did not propose that the Department should itself undertake the task of producing comparative tables of schools' examination performance; that decision was taken in the light of the consultation responses.

Information respecting departmental contracts is normally treated as commercial in confidence.

We estimate that some £650,000 will be required to compile, publish and distribute the comparative tables this year. The money will be found from within the Department's existing allocation.

Mr. Byers

To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) how provisions of the Data Protection Act 1984 have been taken into account in determining the method by which information will be obtained in order to produce comparative tables of school examination results;

(2) by what legal authority he will be given access to personal machine-readable data being held by examination boards of individual candidates' examination results in order to produce comparative tables of school examination results.

Mr. Forth

The terms under which both the Department for Education and the examining bodies are registered under the Data Protection Act allow for the examining bodies to pass examination results data to the Department for the purpose of calculating and publishing aggregate examination results, as has been done in recent years. The comparative tables themselves will consist of aggregated data only for each school.

Mr. Byers

To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) how a late regrading of an individual's examination paper will be taken into account in the publication of comparative tables of school examination results;

(2) what account the comparative tables he intends to publish on school examination performance will take of the differential performance of boys and girls.

Mr. Forth

All examinations data relating to pupils registered at a particular school will be sent to that school in October for checking. Schools will therefore have an opportunity to notify the contractor preparing the tables of any changes to grades on appeal which are known by the time of the deadline for return of the information.

The comparative tables will not distinguish between the performance of boys and girls. Examinations data in school prospectuses will, however, continue to show results of boys and girls separately, alongside national averages.