School league tables’ release delayed after latest data problems

SCHOOL league tables were not published yesterday after the Department for Education admitted a “significant number” of results were missing from their dataset.

Headteachers accused ministers of “eroding” their confidence, adding that this is the second major data issue to have occurred in the past six months.

The Dfe’s chief statistician announced that there would be a two-week delay to the publication of their data due to a “processing issue”.

Rob Campbell, chairman of the National Association of Headteachers’ secondary committee, said: “Repeated events like this erode confidence. Two instances in a couple of months suggests they need to do something. I would encourage them to review what they are doing.”

Mr Campbell, the chief executive of a multi-academy trust, added: “We are in a system where the stakes around accountability and being held to account are pretty high.

“So getting it right is really important. You are talking about futures of schools, children’s life chances, parents and families.”

In September, the GCSE statistics schools were sent by the DFE to check were “substantially wrong” with “entire swathes” of qualifications missing. Duncan Baldwin,

deputy director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We basically grabbed Government officials by the lapels and said, ‘You really need to sort that out.’

“They assured us the incorrect data wasn’t counted and they had to work very hard and very fast to reissue stuff to schools and get them sorted.”

Provisional performance data for schools’ GCSE results is published in October

‘Getting it right is important. You are talking about the future of schools’

to allow parents to factor this into their decision ahead of the secondary school application deadline.

The data due to be released this week takes into account grades that have changed following remarks.

Neil Mcivor, the Dfe’s chief statistician, explained that the two-week delay was down to “rigorous quality assurance processes”.

He said a “processing issue” led to a “significant number of late results being omitted from the data”.

Mr Mcivor added: “The missing results relate to remarks in key GCSES such as English and maths, so would have a material impact on some reported school data if omitted.”