The Independent Schools Council is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation representing 1,270 independent schools educating more than 500,000 children. It exists to promote choice, diversity and excellence in education, developing talent at all levels of ability and from all backgrounds.

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League Tables

The Independent Schools Council does not publish league tables.

Many people are very critical of league tables and see them as crude instruments. The fact that one school is likely to appear in different positions in different tables, depending on the criteria of different newspapers, reinforces the need to understand the limitations of such tables. It is, however, desirable to have information about examination results in the context of other details about each school.

When you look at league tables and the results from which they are compiled, remember:

Examination results are only one measure of a school's achievements - albeit a very important one. They should not be seen in isolation from its other characteristics.
They take no account of factors affecting individual candidates (such as their backgrounds) or schools (such as catchment areas).
They do not tell you how academically selective the school is in admitting pupils at 11, 12, 13 or into the sixth form at 16.
They do not tell you a school's examination entry policy: does it enter for examinations only those who are certain, or very likely, to pass and thereby score more highly than a school with a more liberal policy?
They tell you nothing about ‘added value': the extent to which a school has enabled a boy or girl to achieve more than seemed possible a few years earlier. Yet this must be one of the most important tests of a ‘good' school.
They are aggregate results: is it sensible to choose or discount a school by the position which the sum of other children's performances have put it in a league table, rather than by the needs and potential of your own child?

Remember, too, that looking at one year's results in isolation can be misleading. Schools have variable intakes and ‘off' years. That is why it is a good idea to ask a school for results over, say, a five year period.

Some schools have particular characteristics which also need to be taken into account. Specialist music schools, for example, are centres of musical excellence and also provide a mainstream academic education. However, pupils undertaking the schools' intensive music programme usually take fewer GCSE and Advanced level subjects. This affects the average number of points obtained per candidate. A similar distortion affects schools with a substantial proportion of dyslexic pupils.