EVER since they were introduced by the Tories ten years ago, the school league tables have provoked controversy and opposition from those in teaching.

So the threat today by the head of East Lancashire's leading independent school, prestigious Stonyhurst College, to join moves by private schools nationwide to boycott publication of this year's results is part of the familiar friction that has dogged the tables throughout.

In essence, the reason for resistance to the tables is that they fail to fairly measure or reflect the performance of schools or their pupils -- as being based largely on examination results or standard tests, they give a highly limited view of their achievements in other aspects of education. How, for instance, can the tables indicate how well schools have done in developing non-academic skills -- such improving pupils' social, personal and physical abilities?

It is, we see, an outlook shared by other East Lancashire independent schools though they may not go so far as to join the boycott being threatened by their sector's umbrella organisation, the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. But since they are ones which -- in large part due to their selectivity and the social background of their intakes -- generally score well in the tables does not their disdain for their value add weight to the widespread criticism of them across education?

It is, of course, true that essentially the tables are but crude measures of schools -- despite refinement of them in recent years so they now show truancy rates, which schools have improved over several years and other so-called 'value-added' factors. As a result, a school with ostensibly poor results in the tables may be unable to show how well it might well be doing in difficult circumstances. As a result, the tables can be cheap ammunition for political misuse.

But they are far being meaningless or worthless. Above all, they are a must-do-better spur for improvement and the raising of standards. And however crude, they aid parental choice and, so, become another stimulus. Also, they make schools openly accountable to the taxpayers and fee-payers and there is nothing wrong in that.