Blogs

Accountability: How some schools are gaming the system

Recent research suggests some schools are going to extreme lengths to game the accountability system – even excluding or managing pupils out. Brian Rossiter offers his commentary on these disturbing findings

From the early days of the school league tables, “gaming” has been associated with the accountability system. The uneasy relationships that have developed between schools and the system have rarely received public notice. Amanda Spielman, the Ofsted chief inspector, and Sir David Carter, the national schools commissioner, recently made explicit something that has been a concern for many of us for many years.

An issue that previously went uncontested is that some schools have been taking perverse actions to improve their position in the league tables and to protect their status within the education system. This can be at the expense of other local schools and certainly at the expense of the learners within the school system.

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