Exam and target mania

The British government is bringing in a new system to measure schools called Progress 8. The old system measured schools on the basis of how many of their pupils got grade C or above at GCSE (English school leaving exams, taken at 16), which encouraged schools to focus on their C/D borderlines and neglect both the bright ones and the no-hopers. One headmaster even had pictures of all his borderline pupils plastered over the staffroom, with standing instructions to teachers to greet them in the corridors to give them a sense of value and self-worth.

Needless to say, the new measure has instantly been criticised. Progress 8 measures the difference between a child's predicted grade at 11 and his actual grade. It has been criticised because it demands the same "gradient" from poor and good pupils. If a predicted B gets and A, that's worth the same as if a predicted E gets a D. There's likely a lot in that complaint, if a secondary school can get an illiterate child at 11 up to being able to just about read a popular magazine, it has done extremely well. But that would only be one point on the English GCSE.

The truth is that a really fair, centralised, top-down method for judging schools is impossible to devise. Another truth is that, given two schools, one with a poor intake and one with a good intake, and exactly the same effort from staff, the one with the good intake will be a lot better.. Teachers can concentrate on actually teaching rather than acting as social workers. What's the measurement actually supposed to measure, and what good is it to anyone? Time to abandon these measures totally, not ticker with them even more.