Key Stage Performance Tables

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (formerly Department for Education and Skills) prepare and publish results of the national English, Mathematics and Science Key Stage 2 assessments of pupils in their final year of primary education. They are also responsible for the preparation and publishing of tables for GCSE and A-Level results, and for Key Stage 3 assessments up to 2008.

These tables are made up from information about pupils' achievements and they do not separate out all the factors that affect schools. They cannot, therefore, specifically tell us about school performance, much less an individual school's performance. Measuring a school's performance has to take into account many other factors such as pupils' earlier achievements, learning difficulties, relative wealth or deprivation of the areas served by the school and individual, family and social factors. At present there is still no national framework to incorporate these aspects in the published data. These are tables, therefore, of pupil performance, not school performance. However, the webpages for Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 now include a Value Added score or Contextual Value Added score for each school and our authority overall. These go some way towards showing how well each school has done by achieving its test results given its pupils and their prior achievement. The website for the tables explains the concept in more detail.

It is clear that there is variability in results from one year to another, and this can be particularly noticeable in small schools. This, as well as the changes to the pattern of testing each year, means that year-on-year comparisons can only be made with the greatest of caution or not at all. And of course, from time to time, particular factors impact on different schools in different areas.

The DCSF hold and display tables of primary school performance from 1996 and secondary school performance from 1994 to the present day.

You can access the DCSF school Achievement and Attainment tables for every Local Authority.

Any queries should be referred to either the Head Teacher of the school or to the Education service at County Hall.