TODAY'S key stage 3 results are useful for monitoring individual pupils' progress, but league tables comparing them are not necessarily helpful, according to a Worcestershire County Council education chief.

Colin Weeden, head of raising achievement and access to learning, said he was pleased with Worcestershire schools' key stage 3 results.

He also defended the performance of city schools for their value-added score, which marks pupils' progress from key stage 2.

Of the five secondary schools in Worcester, only two - Nunnery Wood and Bishop Perowne - topped the 100.1 county average value-added score, while Worcestershire as a whole was beaten by schools in neighbouring Herefordshire, which achieved a value added score of 100.2.

But Mr Weeden said: "This is what we call crude value added scores. It does not take context into account.

"Where we had the results that come out recently over things like key stage 4, they have now got these measures of contextual value-added, which allows for a school's circumstances to be taken into account. Clearly, if you have got more children with special needs, then you would not expect as much as from other schools.

"It's like comparing a grammar school with a secondary modern. You are going to get a different result unless you take into account the socio-economic background and special needs at the school."

He said if contextual value added was introduced at key stage 3, it could well alter the table significantly.

Mr Weeden said this situation could explain the poor performance of Elgar Technology College in the tables, which came bottom in the county for average point score as well as value-added.

"If you contextualise it, it would probably move further up the table, although we could not say where it would be," he said. He said that without such contextualisation, the usefulness of today's key stage 3 results was limited.

"Our view is that all of the key stage results are important because it does help measure the progress that individual pupils are making more so perhaps than individual schools," he said.

"For individual pupils, parents and teachers, it's a useful measure of their progress."

Herefordshire tables: TURN TO page 87