THERE was good news this week, Brighton and Hove children are doing well in school.

In a measure of their progress across a range of subjects, they were above the national average. The same is true for East and West Sussex.

How we measure children’s progress in school and how schools are measured is complex and subject to a lot of debate. We have league tables that purport to show how our schools are ranked relative to each other according to a range of measures, most notably examination results. There are measures of “value-added”, designed to enable fair comparisons between different groups of pupils.

It’s not just a raw score or grade, but how much progress they have made relative to their ability. Progress 8, the newest measure of schools and pupils, looks at the progress children make from primary through secondary school in eight separate subjects.

To be honest, headteachers need to be statistically adept to enable them to make sense of the various progress measures. Parents not familiar with education will, most likely, be confused about what all these measures are telling them about their child’s school.

If we look at Progress 8, for example, the first question to ask is what subjects actually count for Progress 8? Luckily, the Department for Education has a fact sheet which sets this out: “English; mathematics; three other English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects (sciences, computer science, geography, history and languages); and three further subjects, which can be from the range of EBacc subjects, or can be any other approved, high-value arts, academic, or vocational qualification.”

So that’s clear then. No? Well, perhaps that’s because within this definition we have another interesting and relatively new group of subjects, the EBacc or English Baccalaureate. This is a suite of GCSE subjects in which pupils must secure a grade C or above at GCSE level across a core of five academic subjects – English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language. But the EBacc is not in itself a qualification. And what about those “high-value” arts subjects? Does that mean history of art but not art or drama but not dance? And what about pupils who may struggle to get good grades in eight subjects? Where does that leave them?

What is noticeable in looking at the curriculum in our schools is how complicated it has become and how it places a premium on the so-called academic subjects over the vocational or creative subjects.

A lot of the problems and complicated measures have come about as schools were “gaming” the league table system to improve their position to the detriment of pupils who were not entered for some exams or pushed to do others. But what do you expect when you have league tables? No school strives to be at the bottom of the table, yet the nature of tables is that there will be a top, a middle and someone must be at the bottom.

We laughed at Michael Gove’s assertion that all schools could be better than average as of course it is mathematical nonsense.An average means 50 per cent will be above and 50 per cent below that ‘average’. And this is the problem for all schools and league tables – we are applying a way of calculating and comparing schools that, 100 per cent, must have winners and losers, no matter how good the school or the pupils perform.

When I was at school, I did not take as many subjects. Eight was the norm. There’s something to be said about doing less, but doing it better. Yet week after week there is usually a call from somewhere that schools should be teaching children this or that. Which begs the question, who actually decides on what our children “should be taught” – who decides the content of the various subjects?

You would hope that it is the subject specialists, but time after time, we see interference from Government ministers who would like to see what they consider important in the curriculum. Michael Gove famously tried to dictate the content of the history GCSE and removed some American literature from the curriculum saying our English Literature GCSE was not “British” enough.

These same ministers insist on “rigour” in the curriculum – which I do not object to at all, but then they criticise schools for a lack of vocational subjects, advising children to do apprenticeships and giving poor careers advice – yet it is those same Government mandarins that insist on pushing the premium “academic” subjects at the cost of the creative/vocational. It’s the same Government that has decimated careers services and advice in schools.

The word hypocritical comes to mind.

Variety in our education system is one of its strengths. I would not like to see a state controlled curriculum enforced on schools and teachers. Teachers should be encouraged to recognise the talents (academic, vocational and creative) in the children they teach and enable them to follow a pathway of success in any of those areas.

James D Williams is a science lecturer at the University of Sussex