Parent Power tells us a lot – but not very much about the best schools

by Rich Coulter
Imagine for a moment working as a volunteer to build a school in a drought-ravaged, war torn part of the world.
You spend a year in the toughest of circumstances, you build the school which is beyond the dreams of the community … then you get told you efforts are worthless because a £50m new school built in leafy Surrey is such a better facility.
Wouldn’t really be fair.
But I felt that way as I picked up the 25th anniversary edition of the Sunday Times’s Parent Power, marketed as the definitive guide to Britain’s schools.
I had a feeling I knew what it would ‘reveal’ and it didn’t disappoint.
In their narrow world view, the ‘best’ schools are those with the good fortune to have the best circumstances.
Selective … tick.
In affluent areas … tick.
GCSEs a-plenty … tick.
On page 2 a large headline declares ‘IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN EXAMS’.

Then on page 4 a chart showing the top 150 state secondaries demonstrates this particular survey is ALL ABOUT exams, with blunt academic success the only measure.
Of the 150, the top 62 are ALL selective.
So there’s an in-built likelihood they will do better.

No 63 is described as comprehensive but further investigation reveals it’s a Catholic school … yet again in-built selection process at work.
In another ‘comprehensive’ school, a religious practice test is required.
All in all, most of the top 150 have effectively given themselves a somewhat better chance than the average for getting those GCSE results.
Now this is not about taking away from their achievements. Doubtless, all are fine schools with dedicated staff.
But to declare them ‘the best’ is utterly deceptive.
What about the schools with huge numbers of children for whom English is not their first language?
Or the schools serving estates with high levels of poverty and family breakdown, where many children themselves are carers?
This utter failure by the media to assess the real value of a school, where in some cases staff are battling just to ensure children have stability in their lives, is so damaging.
In recent months I have seen mainstream media running stories which make correlations between ‘house prices and Bristol’s worst schools’.
Not a single attempt to look at the bigger picture.
And in the case of this story, these so-called ‘worst schools’ were not even given a right of reply.
We need to stop turning schools into a kind of Premier League. It’s an easy headline but it tells parents next to nothing about quality of teaching.
By all means let’s highlight Ofsted.
But if we are going to rate schools as the Sunday Times has done, a more sophisticated way other than exam success has to be devised or it’s not worth doing.
We need the best teachers in the most challenging schools.
Who would work their guts out, producing miraculous results only to be told they are worthless?

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