Time, Gentlemen, Please!

League Tables foster superficiality, materialism and downright falsehood. Michael St John Parker argues that they play into the hands of those who are willing to see education turned into an exercise in social engineering.
PHOTO: BIGSTOCKPHOTO

I remember giving dinner, a good many years ago, to a journalist who had better remain nameless (though some readers will have little difficulty in guessing his identity). He was one of the leading education correspondents of his day, a formidable figure much feared by politicians of all shades. By temperament a sardonic inquirer, and by conviction an advocate of market forces as the means by which to stimulate excellence, he was generally seen as a scourge of the state sector, and was consequently much courted, albeit somewhat apprehensively, by the Heads of independent schools such as mine. On the occasion of our dinner he was full of a fact-finding exercise which he had devised, and which, he believed, would be a powerful tool for the exposure of weak performance and the promotion of academic achievement in schools. The exercise in question was the compiling of a comparative table of public examination results.

His concept of a league table was, clearly, likely to encounter few objections from schools which already felt proud of their examination records. It was well calculated to inspire positive enthusiasm among schools which were ambitious to be seen as upwardly mobile, such as the numerous ex-Direct Grant schools. It resonated well with those educational administrators and politicians who were keen to inject an element of competition into debates about academic performance. And it came at a time when parts, at least, of the state sector were so demoralised that schools could be found which were willing to kiss the rods that beat them. So the league tables began, as summary reports compiled by a brilliant journalist. Such was their success that they rapidly acquired a status of professional and administrative authority, and proliferated like Russian vines in a neglected garden. And just as the ascendancy of a particular plant-growth can transform the appearance and even the micro-climate of a particular environment, so league tables helped to bring about dramatic changes in the little world of British schools.

For a start, a new generation of local reporters found themselves empowered to uncover information on matters which schools had previously kept veiled from view, including the performance of individual pupils. Heads began to evaluate their staffs in terms of their ability to produce acceptable pass rates. School Governors were moved to make comparisons which led them to reflect in novel ways on the competence of their Heads, and sometimes to adjust their salaries accordingly. Prospective parents approached schools armed with questions inspired by ‘Which’-type publications. There was a noticeable diminution in the degree of deference exhibited by the consumers at parents’ evenings.

Because, of course, this was all about the rise of consumerism, and it would be foolish to attribute the transformation of education that took place in the 1980s to the effect of the league tables alone; they were, at most, a vehicle of change – but a vehicle with a Formula 1 engine, a chariot of fire, a bandwagon par excellence.

So what have league tables done for us, after all these years spent inhaling the fumes of their exhausts? They have contributed to the rising reputations of some schools, and the denigration – sometimes unjust – of others. They have aided the careers of some Heads, and helped to bring about the fall of others. But such things might have come about in any case. The real charge against league tables is that they have lowered and cheapened the terms of the educational debate, and have reduced the value attached to the educational activity itself. They have come to be seen not just as summaries of examination performance, but as indices of comparative excellence across an entire range of schools, large and small, and of every possible type. The absurdity of such a conception is evident as soon as it is given the slightest study: how do you compare the performances of cohorts of pupils with radically different levels of ability and aptitude, radically different backgrounds and attitudes, radically different cultures and even languages? How do you equate boarding schools with day schools and coaching establishments? How do you compare outcomes when objectives are fundamentally different? How… the list goes on for ever. But a consumerist alliance of press, parents and politicians operates each year, most especially in the summer silly season when the examination results are published, to perpetuate the nonsense.

Certain benefits there have been. Some schools, undoubtedly, will have been impelled by the adverse publicity generated by their league table positions to try and do better things which they had previously been doing badly. Some institutions which had been hampered by inadequate resources will have received better treatment from those responsible for them, under the shaming influence of the published statistics. And in general it would be churlish to deny that the increased availability of information has, as it usually does, stimulated discussion and the growth of understanding among all those involved in the process of education.

But such benefits have been greatly outweighed by the more malign consequences of the league table fever. When a school’s objectives are dominated by the need to win league table points, there are strong temptations to drop subjects, and even pupils, which (or who) seem unlikely to bring credit; too many have succumbed to such temptations. The curriculum as a whole has been engulfed by the need to quantify success, in ways which can be presented to the statisticians; this Stakhanovite approach has been extended to areas, such as the creative and performing arts, where it is manifestly counter-productive. And, to their shame, teachers have collaborated with examiners to make all subjects fit the same Procrustean bed of statistics, reducing the academic content of one subject while debasing the practical value of another so that all can be given the same sort of grading.

It is painfully evident that the blame for many of these ill consequences can fairly be laid – if blame has to be allocated – at the doors of the schools themselves. Heads, Governors, teachers, and parents have conspired, unwittingly perhaps but hardly unwillingly, to prefer league table credit to educational ideals. But responsibility for the worst consequence of this consumerist rampage must rest squarely with our political lords and masters, the motley crew who trampled over each other in their eagerness to clamber into the league table bandwagon when it first rolled out on to the tarmac, and who have been driving it down the consumerist road ever since, with frenzied yelps of excitement that rise in unseemly crescendo every August.

The nature of this worst consequence becomes apparent from a simple, deadly sequence, as follows: the league tables have focussed attention, to the point of obsession, on examination results; these results have come to be seen as the measure of educational success; the political imperative requires that investment in education should be seen to produce benefits in terms of improving results, year after year; and so, if necessary, the examination results must be adjusted to meet the requirement.

The fact of grade inflation – for this is what we are talking about – can no longer be denied with any plausibility. Experienced teachers, researchers in the field of education, university dons, employers, even some politicians now acknowledge that this is the inescapable, disreputable, desperately damaging reality which underlies the claim that we have enjoyed 25 years of uninterrupted ‘improvement’ in the national examination statistics. It is time that we faced up to this reality, and set about abjuring the bad habits that have stimulated its growth, starting perhaps with the League Tables.

Of course, there are still some who say we should not complain. If it takes really dedicated laziness, or determined absenteeism, to fail a school examination, if it requires resolute persistence to avoid being awarded a university place, is it not proof that we are living in an admirably generous society? Surely we should be applauding the teachers whose pupils never fail, and the examiners whose ingenuity accepts whatever is offered to them, and above all the politicians whose benevolent oversight ‘delivers’ 95% success rates?

But then perhaps we might recall the horrid example of the sophists, or professional teachers, of ancient Greece, who promised to ‘deliver’ any sort of knowledge to those who would pay them for it. Their self-defeating fraudulence ended by discrediting their whole tribe, and tarnished the esteem of knowledge itself – hence ‘sophistry’ as a term of abuse for false reasoning.

The League Tables may have served a useful purpose for a little while, but that usefulness disappeared long ago. They foster superficiality, materialism, and downright falsehood. They play into the hands of those who are willing to see education turned into an exercise in social engineering manipulated by central government. And they generate, in shameful quantities, both unjustified arrogance and miserable unhappiness. Their time has gone, and they should be ejected from both the public and the saloon bar of the educational inn.

Michael St John Parker is a Contributing Editor of Attain.
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2007 issue of Attain.