The 2024 league tables are delayed until after the high school deadline

Parents choosing a secondary school for their child this month will now be unable to see the latest performance league tables after the government delayed their release.

The move follows schools finding errors with key stage 4 and 5 results data in pre-publication checks.

The government said the delay was due to “quality issues” in the data submitted by an examination board. The deadline for school control exercises has been extended until November 7.

Provisional secondary school performance data, including Progress 8 scores, was due to be released 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 have been misleading”

The data allows parents to compare schools and also includes progress and achievement 8.

Most schools publish their own results on their website, such as how many students achieve certain grades.

But technically 8 results are embargoed until the government releases them, although some schools still work out their own scores.

Leaders said the delay should not cause major inconvenience to parents as many will have already made up their minds as most open houses will have been held and other results are available online.

Tom Middlehurst, curriculum, assessment and inspection specialist at the Association of School and University Leaders, said: “Whilst we welcome the DfE’s 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 at the end of the month.

“However, inaccurate data could have been even more misleading and unhelpful than no data at all.

“However, this historical data only tells part of a school’s story, and we urge parents and young people to consider a range of factors when choosing a school, including visiting the school itself “.

This is the last year of Progress 8 before a two-year hiatus due to the lack of SAT data from the pandemic.

Andrew O’Neill, headmaster of All Saints Catholic College in London, added that the DfE had “made the right call”.

“People couldn’t log in, and when they finally did they found some of the data was incorrect.

“It’s not right to publish wrong data about schools and have parents use it to make a decision.”

“Much larger than usual” data errors

The Department for Education said last week it was “aware of issues with missing Pearson BTECs and issues with NCFE grades 1, 2 and VCert”.

It followed school leaders reporting problems during their exercise of checking that GCSE and A-level results are correct.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the school leaders’ union ASCL, said there appeared to be “a much higher than usual number of errors with the data”.

The deadline for schools to check their results has been extended until November 7. The department has brought the service back in-house, but its new portal has suffered technical problems.

Di’Iasio previously said the problems have caused a great deal of anxiety and added workload for school and university leaders. He previously said it would be “sensible” to extend the deadline, considering mid-October.

An NCFE spokesman said all of its published results are “valid and accurate. The reason for the difference between the data issued by the NCFE in the summer and the data on the Department for Education (DfE) portal it is because it showed assessment level results rather than grade level results.

“We appreciate that this may have caused some anxiety and extra work for staff at the schools and apologize for any inconvenience caused.

“We are actively working with DfE to ensure the correct grade level data is visible on the DfE portal and will notify schools when this has happened.”

A Pearson spokesman said they “regret that a technical error in the results file shared with the DfE meant that some BTEC results were not included.

“We are working swiftly to resolve the issue with the DfE and regret any inconvenience caused.”

The problem only affected the transfer of data to DfE, not the results already issued.