Keighley-district schools have welcomed latest league tables for GCSEs and A-levels (From Keighley News)

Keighley-district schools have welcomed latest league tables for GCSEs and A-levels

6:00pm Thursday 31st January 2013 in News By Alistair Shand

Keighley-district schools have welcomed latest league tables for GCSEs and A-levels.

But some headteachers have also voiced reservations.

Bradford district as a whole fell 17 places – to 120th out of 150 local authorities nationally – for the average number of A-level points scored by each student last year.

But it is celebrating its best GCSE results, with 52.4 per cent of pupils achieving the Government’s benchmark of at least five A* to C grades, including English and maths – up from 47.5 per cent the previous year.

David Maxwell, headteacher at Oakbank School in Keighley, said: “We are extremely pleased with our results but we still need to do better. All our key indicators have improved and we are very happy with that.”

However he said the inclusion of new measures at A-level – where the percentages gaining A*, A and B in so-called ‘enabling subjects’ are now being published as an indicator – gives a false impression.

“A lot of our students do A-level subjects that are not counted in the measure so it discriminates against them,” he said.

Holy Family School headteacher, Lawrence Bentley, said: “We’ve sustained our good results from the previous year.

“We’re now looking at six out of every ten pupils getting five good GCSEs, including English and maths. That’s opposed to three out of ten five years ago, which gives an indication of how much progress has been made.

“We had a good Ofsted report before Christmas, which shows the school is going in the right direction.

“But behind the statistics being bandied about on newspaper pages there are individual students and teachers working hard and really applying themselves. We shouldn’t get lost in the statistics.”

Dr Andrew Cummings, headteacher at South Craven School in Cross Hills, said: “We were delighted to celebrate excellent results in the summer – 99 per cent of students achieved five A* to C at GCSE at age 16.

“We’re pleased this figure has been published, as well as the figure for five A* to C at GCSE, including English and maths, which was 62 per cent.

“Frustratingly, there is no publication of the progress measures calculated by Ofsted, which show our results to be in the top 15 per cent nationally.”

Linda Wallsgrove, associate principal of University Academy Keighley, said the school was delighted with its placing in the league table.

She said there had been a “very significant” improvement in GCSE passes, particularly those for five A* to C grades, including maths and English.

And she said the school had also gained the highest level amongst Keighley’s secondary schools in the ‘value-added’ ranking, which shows how successful the school has been in raising pupils’ attainment since they started at 11.

Tony Rickwood, head of Parkside School in Cullingworth, was also pleased the school had increased its proportion of pupils gaining five GCSEs at A* to C, including English and maths.

He said: “That’s really going to be our priority during the next year, to make sure the figures are even better next year. Our results have been consistently good for quite a time.”

Dr Rickwood said the figure had increased despite Parkside’s GCSE English results being affected by last year’s controversial raising of grade boundaries.