LAST year (the last academic year) my youngest daughter was in one of the 'SATS' years (Year 7) at Old Hall County Primary and I was a member of the governing body.

The headteacher, Mrs Smith, staff, pupils and parents invested a significant amount of effort to improve the school's performance in the league tables over the previous year and were, indeed, very successful.

However, while I am sure the tables are an important stimulus to the development of education standards, they are by no means the only or even the most important.

If one imagines the football league every year being made up of teams that have never played before, the results would be almost random (and even Everton could win the double - you wish).

If we attach too much significance to the SATS we risk making decisions based on somewhat random results that almost completely ignore some of our children's most important educational needs - cultural, sociological and emotional.

In their time at Old Hall my children learned to play the recorder, paint, dance and carry an egg on a spoon for fifty metres as well as read, write and do sums.

The contribution the school made to their development as a member of our community is extremely important and cannot be measured on a chart.

Incidentally, the children from the year before my daughter have gone on to make excellent progress in their secondary schools and I am sure they will do well in their GCSEs and beyond, league tables or not.

MIKE ORGAN

Shackleton Close

Old Hall

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.