League tables

League tables (published by newspapers) and Performance Tables (published by the Government) are very unreliable measures of a school. They fail to take into account factors such as the ability of pupils on arrival at the school, the number of subjects taken, and the range of extra-curricular activities on offer.

If you would like a full explanation of this, please download the HMC leaflet School League Tables - what they tell you, and what they don't.

In our case, the published league tables do not include the results of the international GCSEs (known as IGCSEs) which our pupils sit in some subjects (Mathematics at present, with Science from 2008). They are therefore totally unrepresentative of our true results.

A fairer method of determining the academic success of a school is by value-added measurement. All our pupils take a baseline test at age 11, and again at 13. From these, the levels which they should attain at GCSE and A-level can be calculated, and those who do better than expected are said to have 'added value'. In the last three years for which comparative data is available, all pupils did better than expected in almost all subjects at GCSE, and significantly better at A-level. Please ask if you would like further detail.

Next: The curriculum