Education: One better than league tables: Can you judge a school by exam results? A Newcastle University team thinks not, and offers a more interesting analysis, says Donald MacLeod

Happy or disappointed, this summer's A- level victims and their families can at least now try to forget the exams. For teachers, analysis of the results is just beginning and is being given an added edge with the publication, for the first time, of league tables.

If the proposal by the teachers' pay review body to link pay with examination results is ever implemented, these post-mortems will become even more important.

How much light the new league tables will shed on a school's performance, however, is open to question. Are a school's good results due to good teaching or a good catchment area? Grammar schools and independent schools will obviously rank higher in the league than comprehensives because they select their pupils; the more selective, the better the results. But does that mean they are getting the best out of their students? Are a school's results dragged down by one weak department? Or are low grades a reflection of encouraging a wider range of pupils to try different courses, or recruiting more into subjects where failure rates are higher?

Many teachers feel threatened by league tables, but not those in north-east England, where almost all schools and colleges have volunteered to have their A-level results rigorously analysed and measured against what their pupils should have achieved.

Newcastle University's A-Level Information System (Alis), a service provided by the university's school of education, analyses the results and then provides the schools with data on individual pupils for each subject they have taken, showing, in effect, whether they have performed better or worse than expected in the light of their GCSE scores, social background and a standard intelligence test.

Not only does the record of the history department or the school's maths teachers stand exposed in detailed charts and tables, but the students' (anonymous) comments on their teaching are reported back to the school by the Newcastle University researchers. No longer can the biology department, say, deflect criticism of poor results with 'Oh it's just the kids we get'. On the other hand, if the English department has nursed some most unlikely candidates through to a grade D or E then it will receive the credit for it.

The system, started 10 years ago, has proved popular and has spread to more than 100 schools in the region, each one paying about pounds 600 a year for the privilege.

Carol Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Education at Newcastle and the project's director, believes that Alis gives teachers the specific information they need to monitor performance in the classroom. 'What schools want we try to give them,' she says.

In one school, for example, in chemistry classes where pupils reported being set essays at least once a fortnight, the exam results were better than expected. The Newcastle data showed this happening over three successive years, despite staff changes in that department. Another school wanted to look at the effect of students' part-time jobs, so this was built into the questionnaires.

Other findings apply to all the schools. Girls, it has been found, do worse at A-level than expected on the basis of their GCSE results. Whether GCSE is more geared towards the way girls like to work is unclear. The team is now focusing on the question.

Professor Fitz-Gibbon says the system enables schools to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. 'It helps them to keep a watchful eye on trends in indicators and to know where help is needed and praise should be given.

'No one is saying there is a single correct teaching method. No one is bullying teachers as to whether or not they use dictated notes. But an eye is being kept on the outcome. If the outcome is good, everyone can feel confident that somehow they are getting it right,' says Professor Fitz-Gibbon.

John Garmstone, deputy principal of Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington, says it helps to fine-tune teaching methods. Pupils' comments are revealing, he says: 'The students' perception of what they are receiving is not always the same as what we think we are delivering.'

The Alis figures are not published - a factor Professor Fitz-Gibbon regards as crucial. She argues that schools would not be so open and honest if they thought the information would be made public.

Professor Fitz-Gibbon also believes that the publication of league tables will damage schools. She is at present locked in a dispute with Desmond Nuttall and Harvey Goldstein, of the London Institute of Education, over their plans to publish a national 'value added' league table, which would compare results at GCSE and at A-level. They admit their table has imperfections but argue that as the Government has decreed league tables of 'raw' results, which take no background factors into account, anything fairer is worth attempting. Professor Fitz-Gibbon will have none of this.

Comparing schools at A-level is, in her view, a mistake in any case. There are good and bad departments in every school, she says. This is where monitoring needs to go on.

Alis interprets A-level results in the light of what the pupils could reasonably have expected to get. The best indicator for A-level success is the student's average GCSE score - not biology GCSE to predict biology A-level.

Professor Fitz-Gibbon and her team also look at socio-economic status, but pupil by pupil rather than for the school's catchment area. In one of the most deprived schools, they found the A-level maths class all came from a professional background, for example.

But social background is, she argues, a very small contributory factor. Of course it is to some extent built into GCSE results but Professor Fitz-Gibbon points out that it is nevertheless a considerable tribute to the education provided that pupils are gaining expected grades regardless of home background.

Independent school league tables are out already, and secondary school tables will be published in November, featuring further winners and losers around the country. For those schools at the bottom of the list the experience involves a public pillorying, often unjustified. Schools genuinely trying to improve their students' performances need the kind of detailed information Alis provides - and the occasional pat on the back.

(Photograph omitted)