Times tables

It's great to have league tables - life was a lot harder for poor parents before we did - but it does no good to take them too seriously.

For the first thing, it's too easy for schools to cheat...

• If the league table ranks pupils by A level points, all the school has to do is to get pupils to take General Studies A level, and pile on the points without having to teach them anything extra.

• If you try to avoid that distortion by ranking schools by points per exam, schools can respond by steering their pupils towards easier subjects: swap As in Media Studies for Bs in languages or sciences.

• Tighten up on that by ranking schools by the percentage of A grades in subjects that Cambridge University accepts for entrance? Schools can - and sadly often do - chuck out underperforming students after GCSE to raise their average A level performance.

• And, above all, schools select, select, select: if a school chooses good students then it is likely to get good results. And without good value added tables - see below - there's no easy way to tell if the results are due to good teaching or fierce selection.

Secondly, the rankings have a random element. Year groups differ from each other. In comprehensive schools, the quality of intake can vary totally by chance, but even in selective schools the spirit and motivation of a year group can take it up or down the tables.

Thirdly Government pigheadedness has destroyed the GCSE tables. The DCSF refuses to include the results of International GCSE exams, which many independent schools take in preference to the (they say and I agree) devalued GCSE. The DCSF does however include, at inflated points scores, a host of minor qualifications including the notorious cake decorating.

Fourthly, even the value-added tables don't help as much as they might. At primary school and as the base for the GCSE value added tables, Key Stage tests are used to measure achievement - inexact and inadequate. On top of that, independent schools don't feature in the primary or GCSE value added tables because they don't take Key Stage exams. Even the GCSE to A level value added tables, which might have thrown some interesting light on independent school performance, have been messed up by the exclusion of IGCSE results, so that independent schools who have not had their IGCSE results counted appear to be turning GCSE dunces into A level stars.

Lastly, you miss out on some wonderful schools if you stick to the top of any table. A school which is getting 80% of its pupils up to speed for Cambridge University has obvious attractions - if your child can stand the ferocious pace. But a school getting 15% of its pupils up to speed for Cambridge still has plenty of pupils getting there, and may be doing just as well for those who are up to those academic heights. And it may have the style, breadth and spirit that will suit your child much better. Heathfield, St Bede's, Westonbirt, Monkton, Bedales, King Alfred and many more excellent schools, all in The Good Schools Guide, are to be found in that part of the tables.

Don't be too worried either about schools that move up or down the league tables: moves up are often due to getting more selective or chucking children out, moves down may just mean that the school is taking a broader intake.

What matters is choosing a school to suit your particular child and you. You can't use one measure to do this. Would you choose your ideal husband by height alone? There are lots of characteristics that you can measure schools by: make a list of the ones that matter to you, see how each school measures up (there's lots of information to be found outside the tables: the Good Schools Guide website at www.thegoodschoolsguide.co.uk, inspection reports, schools' own websites, and most of all your impressions when you visit), put them all in order of importance, produce a consolidated score if you wish. Then (as with husbands) you may well choose something completely different.

The important thing is to have done the work, to have thought things through. When it comes to making a final judgment trust your inner sense of what is right. League tables, like all statistics, are for prompting questions, not for making judgments.

Times tables

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