By Gary Eason Education editor, BBC news website

The results will be published - but not in league tables

The government is refusing to give schools' English and maths GCSE results to the news media, to prevent their publication in the "league tables".

Official tables due out on Thursday will be accompanied by information on English and maths GCSEs - ministers' new benchmark for school attainment.

But those figures are not in the data given to journalists in advance to compile their rankings of schools.

The education department said doing so would "prejudice" public affairs.

Key indicator

The main indicator of GCSE-level performance encouraged by the government has been the proportion of students obtaining the equivalent of at least five qualifications at grade C or above.

Last year ministers decided to toughen this up, so that the five had to include English and maths GCSEs.

The Department for Education and Skills collects those results each year but has not previously published them.

It plans to do so from next year.

Information request

In October, the BBC obtained the results for 2004 and re-published its secondary school tables to show that new English and maths-based indicator as well as the old one covering the equivalent of any five subjects.

The government then told schools it would publish their English and maths results for 2005 this week - not in its main tables, but alongside them.

The BBC News website had already asked for those results under the Freedom of Information Act.

The application was refused.

We were told by the Department for Education and Skills: "We believe that the release of this information would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs as it would undermine the publication of the Achievement and Attainment Tables.

"We have considered the public interest test and feel that the pre-announced release, which allows equality of access, to be in the public interest."

The shadow education secretary, David Willetts, said: "The government say they care about performance in maths and English but they won't release that information in advance so it can be included in newspapers' league tables.

"What is the point of the government having expensive initiatives for parental information, then depriving parents of the very information they really want?

"We need this information in league tables so we can have a mature debate about how to improve the quality of education."

Change

A change proposed by the education department this year is that its figures will report the attainment of children at the end of Key Stage 4 of the national curriculum - rather than, as before, those aged 15 at the start of the school year.

This is intended to reflect the need for students to follow courses at their own pace.

In most schools those finishing Key Stage 4 will be in Year 11, the year group in which pupils normally take their GCSEs.

Some will be younger or older than 15.