I was wrong in my earlier post about the government not publishing exam results. Digging into the website of the Department of Children, Schools and Families, I’ve found the exam results for 2005 to 2008, but not 2009. It does take quite a bit of searching to get to the comparative tables. Eventually, I found those for Surrey’s schools.

The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and The Times have all published tables of GCSE exam results by school. But confusingly they each use different figures to assess performance, and even more confusingly their tables are incomplete. For example they don’t include some of our local schools, such as Tomlinscote, and Kings International College. Is it because the school does not release the information?  Anyway, here’s the data for local GCSE results extracted from the Guardian’s table of 400 comprehensives and academies,

• St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive – 94th
• Gordon’s School - 143rd 
• Collingwood College – 284th

Many people, certainly within education circles, argue that publishing exam results by school is divisive and creates too much focus on position within a league table. Sure, that can be the case. However, I believe parents are savvy folk, and look beyond exam results for their child’s education needs. 

I hadn’t realised that the tables published in the press were so partial. There are over 3000 state secondary, comprehensives and academies. The press publish results from 400 or so.

What is needed is a table of all schools, and published by government. I think I’ll have to speak to Michael Gove about this, and discover his opinion.