Parents choosing a secondary school for their child this month will now not be able to see the most recent performance league tables after government delayed their publication.
The move follows schools finding errors with their key stage 4 and 5 results data in pre-publication checks.
Government said the delay was down to “quality issues” in data submitted by an exam board. Schools’ checking exercise deadline has now been extended until November 7.
Provisional secondary school performance data, which includes progress 8 scores, was due to be published tomorrow.
Parents choosing a secondary school for their child this year must submit their choices by Thursday, October 31 – next week.
But in an update, the Department for Education said its performance data will now be published between November and December.
‘Inaccurate data would’ve been misleading’
The data allows parents to compare schools, and also includes progress and attainment 8.
Most schools publish their own results on their website – such as how many pupils achieve certain grades.
But technically progress 8 results are embargoed until government publishes them, although some schools still do work out their own scores.
Leaders said the delay should not cause a huge inconvenience for parents as many will have already made their decision as open days will have mostly taken place, and other results are available online.
Tom Middlehurst, curriculum, assessment and inspection specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “While we welcome the fact that the DfE have made the decision not to publish incomplete and inaccurate data, it will obviously be frustrating for parents and young people making decisions about their secondary school choices by the end of the month.
“However, inaccurate data could have been even more misleading and unhelpful than no data at all.
“In any case, this historical data only tells part of a school’s story, and we’d urge parents and young people to consider a range of factors when making a school choice, including by visiting the school itself.”
This is the last year of progress 8 before a two year hiatus, due to a lack of SATs data from the pandemic.
Andrew O’Neill, headteacher at All Saints Catholic College, in London, added the DfE “has made the right call”.
“People couldn’t log in, then when they finally were able to they found some of the data wasn’t right.
“It’s not right to publish the wrong data about schools and for parents to use that to make a decision.”
Data errors ‘far larger than usual’
The Department for Education said last week it was “aware of issues with missing Pearson BTECs and issues with NCFE level 1, 2 and VCert grades”.
It followed school leaders reporting issues during their checking exercise that GCSE and A-level results are correct.
Pepe Di’Iasio, ASCL school leaders’ union general secretary, said there appeared “to be a far larger than usual number of errors with the data”.
The deadline for schools to check their results has been extended to November 7. The department has brought the service back in-house, but its new portal has suffered technical issues.
Di’Iasio previously said the problems have caused a huge amount of anxiety and additional workload for school and college leaders. He previously said extending the deadline – given the October half term – would be “sensible”.
A spokesperson for NCFE said all its issued results are “valid and accurate. The reason for the difference between the data issued by NCFE in the summer and the data on the Department for Education’s (DfE) portal is because it showed assessment level outcomes rather than qualification level outcomes.
“We appreciate this may have caused some anxiety and additional work for staff in schools and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
“We are actively working with DfE to ensure that the correct qualification level data is visible in the DfE portal and will notify schools when this has happened.”
A Pearson spokesperson said they “regret that a technical error in the results file shared with the DfE meant that some BTEC results had not been included.
“We are working quickly to resolve the issue with the DfE and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
The problem only impacted the data transfer to DfE, not results already issued.
Your thoughts