External influences can affect educational achievement

A report from the Commons public accounts committee said performance can be transformed when external influences are put into the equation.

It said it was important to be clear about the factors driving performance.

Educational factors were within the control of schools, but many factors were not, and parents should have access to such information, MPs said.

Performance shift

The National Audit Office had shown - in a study published last November - that the impact of external factors could be measured and analysed "to give a clearer indication of the quality of education provided by different schools".

"Such analysis would provide valuable information for policy-makers, and for parents who wish to make informed choices between the schools available for their children."

Making adjustments as the audit office had suggested could result in some schools moving from the bottom to the top 20% in the performance tables.

Social and economic deprivation should be taken into account, and a pupil's eligibility for free school meals - a poverty indicator - "can be shown to be strongly correlated with educational disadvantage".

'Fairer funding'

But the Department for Education and Skills should go further, the MPs said, and examine using such things as the data on families in receipt of Income Support or the Working Families Tax Credit.

And they want the education inspectorate, Ofsted, to show in its inspection reports where a school ranked in terms of academic achievement before and after taking account of the influence of external factors.

The committee chairman, Edward Leigh, said: "This enhanced information must be available to parents, so that they can take it into account in selecting schools, however limited the choices they have."

His committee also said the department should make the funding arrangements for schools "simpler, fairer and more transparent".

"The number and complexity of funding streams for schools is unacceptably high and a recipe for confusion."

'Value added'

The education department said in response that the committee was right to argue for more information for parents.

"Parents have a right to know as much as they can about how schools are doing. We want to give them as much as we can, including the range of factors that affect how a school does.

"For the first time last year 'value added' information was included in all performance tables. This showed how much progress a school made with different pupils, taking account of their prior attainment."

The intention was to extend this to include other factors.

There was also a plan for a new "school profile" to sit alongside the tables - containing information about how a school served all its pupils and what it offered in terms of a broader curriculum.

At present, information available to the department - such as eligibility for free meals - is not published.

It is now in Scotland, along with other information such as school leavers' destinations.

Only England in the UK publishes schools' results in the form of performance tables.