Measurement Madness: Recognizing and Avoiding the Pitfalls of Performance Measurement

Chapter 5Comparing Performance

In 2007, an English secondary school was deservedly celebrating its success in the most recent GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations. The school's philosophy was to focus on the individual achievements of students; their success in progressing to university courses and fulfilling careers; and their holistic development. Therefore, the fact that pupils had achieved near perfect results, with only one pupil missing out in one particular subject, was indeed cause for self-congratulation. However, as the school was soon to discover, self-congratulation would be their only praise for this impressive achievement.

Shortly after the results, a league tableⁱ of schools was published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), which placed the school just within the top 25% of schools nationally, and which stated that only 75% of the pupils had in fact passed five or more GCSEs. Naturally, the school's head teacher and board of governors were aghast at this misrepresentation of their achievements and called for clarity on how this ranking had been calculated.

Although being congratulated, it was pointed out that whilst the benchmark of five subjects was consistently measured across all secondary schools, the pupils entered into the calculation had to be aged 15 on 1st September in the year prior to the examination. Therefore, the fact that this particular school allowed pupils to sit the examinations at the most ...