The limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice

Journal article

Leckie, George and Goldstein, Harvey. (2009). The limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice. Royal Statistical Society. Journal. Series A: Statistics in Society.

Authors	Leckie, George and Goldstein, Harvey
Abstract	In England, so-called ‘league tables’ based on examination results and test scores are published annually, ostensibly to inform parental choice of secondary schools. A crucial limitation of these tables is that the most recent published information is based on the current performance of a cohort of pupils who entered secondary schools several years earlier, whereas for choosing a school it is the future performance of the current cohort that is of interest. We show that there is substantial uncertainty in predicting such future performance and that incorporating this uncertainty leads to a situation where only a handful of schools’ future performances can be separated from both the overall mean and from one another with an acceptable degree of precision. This suggests that school league tables, including value-added tables, have very little to offer as guides to school choice.
Year	2009
Journal	Royal Statistical Society. Journal. Series A: Statistics in Society
Publisher	Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Page range	835 - 851
Research Group	Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE)
Place of publication	United Kingdom

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