But something you should take into account: the IW was the 9th most improved authority for its GCSE 5+ A*-C inc E&M in 2007, so the average trend IS markedly upwards (of course we all want to see improvement, not just for every school to be above the government baseline).

To add a local interpretation, on the Island we have five community high schools all achieving fairly similar percentages at ‘5 or more grades A*-C including English and Maths GCSEs’. From the DCSF website there were approximately 1590 pupils in those schools at the end of KS4. Approximately 680 reached that level, and approximately 910 did not.

Consider for a moment that one school became a grammar school (or church school etc.) of 300 pupils and only took those that would reach that level. For the same children, there would only be 380 reaching that level shared between the remaining four schools (with 1290 pupils). If evenly spread, each would only have a 29% pass rate at ‘5 or more grades A*-C including English and Maths GCSEs’. We would therefore have four ‘failing schools’.

No criticism of the media or SNT, but it does not seem to be a particularly useful measure on its own. The presence of grammar schools in some areas may not ‘pull up’ results; it may just cause a greater spread of results.

Average attainment would appear to be a better measure, as it is averaged over pupils, not schools, but even that is only part of the picture.