Parents choosing a secondary school for their child this month will now not be able to see the most recent performance rankings after the government has delayed their publication.

The move follows schools discovering errors in their key Stage 4 and 5 results data during pre-publication checks.

The government said the delay was due to “quality issues” in data submitted by an exam board. The deadline for testing exercises in schools has been extended until November 7.

Provisional data on secondary school students’ performance, which includes Progress 8 scores, was due to be released tomorrow.

Parents choosing a secondary school for their child this year must submit their choice by Thursday, October 31 – next week.

But in an update, the Department for Education said its performance data would now be published between November and December.

“Inaccurate data would have been misleading”

The data allows parents to compare schools and also includes progress and results 8.

Most schools publish their own results on their website, for example the number of pupils achieving certain grades.

But technically Progress 8 results are embargoed until the government releases them, although some schools still develop their own scores.

Leaders said the delay should not cause huge inconvenience to parents as many will have already made up their minds as open days have mostly gone ahead and further results are available online.

Tom Middlehurst, curriculum, assessment and inspection specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “While we welcome the DfE’s decision not to publish incomplete data and inaccurate, this will obviously be frustrating for parents and young people. people are making decisions about their high school choices by the end of the month.

“However, inaccurate data could have been even more misleading and unhelpful than no data at all.”

“Either way, this historical data only tells part of a school’s story, and we urge parents and young people to consider a range of factors when making a school choice. school, including visiting the school itself. »

This is the last 8 years of progress before a two-year hiatus, due to a lack of pandemic-related SAT data.

Andrew O’Neill, principal of All Saints Catholic College in London, added that the DfE “made the right choice”.

“People couldn’t log in, and then when they finally did, they discovered that some of the data wasn’t correct.

“It is not okay to release faulty data about schools and let parents use it to make a decision.”

Data errors “much larger than usual”

The Department for Education said last week it was “aware of issues relating to missing Pearson BTECs and issues with NCFE Levels 1, 2 and VCert”.

It was attended by headteachers who reported problems during their exercise to check the accuracy of GCSE and A-level results.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the ASCL headteachers’ union, said there appeared to be “a much larger number of errors than usual in the data”.

The deadline for schools to check their results has been extended to November 7. The department restored service internally, but its new portal encountered technical issues.

Di’Iasio previously said the problems had caused enormous anxiety and additional workload for school and college leaders. He previously said extending the deadline – taking into account the October half term – would be “reasonable”.

An NCFE spokesperson said all published results were “valid and accurate”. The difference between the data published by the NCFE this summer and the data from the Department for Education (DfE) portal is because they showed results at assessment level rather than qualifications level.

“We are aware that this may have caused some anxiety and extra work for school staff and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

“We are actively working with the DfE to ensure that the correct qualification level data is visible on the DfE portal and will notify schools when this happens.”

A Pearson spokesperson said they “regret that a technical error in the results file shared with the DfE meant that some BTEC results were not included.

“We are working quickly to resolve the issue with the DfE and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

The problem only impacted the transfer of data to the DfE, and not the results already published.