Mixed fortunes for city children

While some improved their county rankings, others dropped down the league.

At St George's RC Primary, the city's top-scoring school, 97 per cent of pupils achieved Level 4 or above in English, 85 per cent in maths and 94 per cent in science.

This placed them 11th in the county and headteacher Joseph Baker said he was very pleased with the result.

"The average points score is very high and our position in the county shows children are achieving Level 4 and Level 5 as well," said Mr Baker.

"Although we're pleased with that, we do recognise every child's success in all aspects of school life.

"League tables can be deceptive because they only take into account English, maths and science - they don't take into account 100 other aspects of school life. You can get a much better idea of what a school is like by going there and looking at what the children are doing.

"There are children for whom getting to Level 3 is a great achievement and we celebrate that success."

Phil Evans, headteacher at Dines Green Primary, echoed this.

"Performance tables only give a small indication of what a school does," he said. As far as we're concerned, education is far more than simply the core curriculum."

Mr Evans said individual targets for children would tell much more about a school than national table rankings.

He said a more accurate assessment of how well children were doing would incorporate how well they were doing when they joined.

This is known as "value added" and means measuring a child's ability at seven against how much they have progressed by the time they reach Key Stage 2 level at the age of 11.

"We want to challenge children and have aspirations for them, but at the same time we need to be realistic about what we can expect them to achieve," said Mr Evans. "Some years we won't do as well as we'd have hoped and other years we'll do much better - it's a rollercoaster ride."