Teachers' unions were quick to attack the government's "obsession" with target setting as this year's league tables for secondary schools in England were published.

The National Association of Head Teachers said the government should come up with a better way of measuring pupil attainment and teaching standards or, better still, abandon the tables altogether.

It's league table time again: time for the annual bureaucratic and expensive parade of the obvious

Nigel de Gruchy, NASUWT

The general secretary of the NAHT, David Hart, said raw scores for all schools said nothing about the value added between entry to secondary school and GCSE.

"Once again the government trots out tired old secondary school performance tables that are past their sell-by date and are in need of a radical overhaul," said Mr Hart.

Complaints such as these led to the government setting up a pilot scheme in 200 schools this year to establish what the improvement pupils had made from age 11 to 14 and from age 14 to 16.

The trial scheme will be used as a stepping-stone to "value added" tables for all schools next year.

'Artificial'

Mr Hart said the current tables condemned those schools that were below the government's "highly artificial" 15%, 20% and 25% 5 A* - C GCSE figures.

"They make it more and more difficult for them to recruit staff in order to raise standards in some of the most challenging communities in the country," he warned.

Bob Carstairs, assistant secretary of the Secondary Heads Association (Sha), said the tables were "just another spoke in the wheel of taking power away from the professionals".

"They are another symptom of the government's need to control everything," said Mr Carstairs.

'Too many task masters'

Schools were having to react to too many different task masters - local authorities, the Dfes, Ofsted, governors, parents, he said.

"We don't like league tables as an entity and we would like to see them banned as in Wales and Northern Ireland.

"But if they must be done, then the value added system is better," Mr Carstairs said.

Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of NASUWT said: "It's league table time again: time for the annual bureaucratic and expensive parade of the obvious".

"How come other parts of the United Kingdom manage just as well without this mountain of dubious comparisons?"