Commenting as the government today announce what school performance data they will use for accountability this year, after a disrupted year due to Covid, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders' union NAHT, said:

"The decision to publish the normal sets of performance measures at secondary and post 16 is deeply concerning. The extent of disruption to children and young people’s education has varied considerably during the pandemic, which will make comparison of performance data between schools meaningless. Given widespread acknowledgement of this issue, it is of considerable concern that government should be striving to reintroduce performance tables quite so quickly.

"Published data in 2022 could be unreliable for a number of reasons, but most importantly it will reflect the very different experiences pupils have had and the face to face teaching time they have missed as a result of the pandemic. The data may tell you more about the impact of the pandemic on the school than the achievement and progress which has been made by its pupils, in the challenging circumstances they may have faced.

"While we have known for some time that the government has been intent on pressing ahead with a full suite of statutory assessments, the decision not to publish performance data for primary schools is the right thing to do. However, the data will be calculated and shared with Ofsted. The fact that the data is likely to be highly unreliable means that it should not be used to hold schools to account."