WHEN Michael Gove, the education secretary, took up his post last May, he placed on the bare home page of his department’s website the information that he considers most important: school performance tables. A few months later, Mr Gove added to the data deluge when he announced that schools would be judged not only on the proportion of pupils that passed examinations, but also on the share passing academically rigorous ones. The revamped league tables, published on January 12th, reveal the extent to which schools have artificially inflated their performance by steering pupils towards easier exams.
Just over half of English children leave school having passed five GCSEs, including English and maths, with acceptable grades, a figure that has been rising relentlessly since that measure was introduced as the basis of school-performance tables. Yet only 16% pass their five exams in the subjects once considered essential: a science, a language and a humanity, in addition to English and maths. The rest pass vocational subjects–not surprising, perhaps, when according to the official exchange rate a GCSE in applied physical education is equivalent to one in Latin, and a vocational qualification in beauty therapy worth as much as a good pass at GCSE physics.