For searchable maps and league tables, plus a video of Chris Woodhead explaining what makes a good school, see www.timesonline.co.uk/parentpower

We are sliding back into a new dark age in education. In the 1980s there was no regular inspection of schools, and GCSE and A-level examination statistics were not published for individual schools. It was impossible to compare the performance of one school with another.

Then Ofsted began its systematic inspections, publishing school-by-school reports. Examination results were made available for each school. League tables, based on these results, were compiled by newspapers; Parent Power is now in its 18th year. Parents could study the achievements of different schools and exercise an informed choice.

Accountability brought a desperately needed transparency into the world of both state and independent education. Now the murk is about to descend once again.

The national tests for 14-year-olds have been abolished. Teachers mark their own pupils’ answers in the tests for seven-year-olds, so the results are meaningless in terms of a national standard. The tests for 11-year-olds survive - just - as the sole objective measure of a primary school’s success in teaching the core academic subjects of English, mathematics and science. My guess is that the government, if it wins the next election, will kill them off. Many head teachers would like to see the GCSE examinations abolished and, with everyone expected to stay on to 18, I would be surprised if ministers did not cave in to their pressure.

Last, but by no means least, more than 60 independent head teachers announced earlier this year that they were no longer prepared to make public the data upon which league tables are based.

However, a number of the most prominent, including Martin Stephen, the high master of St Paul’s School in London, have decided this month to release their latest examination results to The Sunday Times. Only Eton College and the Man-chester Grammar School, among our top 50 independent secondary schools, continue to withhold their results for 2008.

Stephen is on record as describing league tables as “a cancer on the face of education” because they encourage “teaching to the test”, destroying any chance of enjoyable learning. You might agree with this view, but only if think your child is being tested to death and believe that head teachers should be allowed to teach whatever they want to any standard they think appropriate.

The Sunday Times celebrates excellence in many walks of life. I do not imagine that the companies included, for example, in the guide to the 100 Best Companies to Work For complain about their inclusion and the celebration of their success as vibrant successful workplaces.

Why should education be different? Because educationalists do not approve of competition. One local authority - Aberdeen city council - even turned down the award for Scottish State Secondary School of the Year made to Cults Academy before reconsidering, perhaps after thinking through how this refusal might play to the public. Not to mention the children and teachers who had worked so hard to achieve the success about which the council appeared to be so ashamed.

In private, the head teachers of schools which top our tables no doubt open a bottle or two with their governors. In public, the thing to do is to look embarrassed, to rubbish the very notion of comparing one school with another, and to commiserate with those languishing sadly at the bottom of the table.

What is wrong with identifying and celebrating excellence? What is wrong with competition?

I accept that examination results are not the be-all and end-all, but I have yet to meet a parent who does not want their child to fulfil his or her potential. So why not compare schools in terms of their academic success?

If the methodology which underpins academic comparison is deemed to be suspect, then let’s work to improve it. Ministers and head teachers might not like it, but schools, state and independent, function in a market. Parents are consumers who are making the most important “purchase” of their lives. They deserve all the information we can give them.

Opponents of league tables do not like to make the point too loudly when parents are around, but one of their arguments against the tables is that parents are too stupid to use them properly.

“They will compare the results of the leafy suburb comprehensive to the inner-city school struggling with its multitude of social problems and they will jump to the conclusion that the latter is a lousy school. Given the community it serves, it may well be doing an excellent job.” If I have heard that said once, I have heard it a thousand times.

Actually, in my experience, parents - and I am not just talking about sophisticated, professional, middle-class parents - are perfectly capable of using the tables intelligently. They might be overimpressed by the grandeur and luxury of some private schools, but they know that the nature of its intake affects any school’s examination results. They compare “like with like”, and they come to their own, very sensible, conclusions.

But what of the central objection that league tables lead to an impoverishment of education? The answer is yes, they can do that, but only if the head teacher is shortsighted enough to allow this to happen.

I say shortsighted for two reasons. First because excessive cramming for the test does not actually improve results. It produces bored students who more often than not underperform. And, second, because parents do not want schools to be exam factories. They want their children to succeed academically, but they also want a rich programme of extracurricular activities, a proper emphasis on spiritual and moral development, and so on.

The problem is not the league tables: it is head teachers who cannot cope with the pressure such tables, quite rightly, bring.

It is easy to see why some schools have chosen to withhold information. Their examinations results are, frankly, embarrassing. It makes sense to hide them from prying eyes. Or so their head teachers might think.

As well as parents, ministers also need to know how schools are performing in comparison with each other. The conventional wisdom, as, for example, expressed earlier this year by the Commons select committee for education, is that the league tables system must be reformed because it is “skewing” children’s education.

In schools with weak head teachers there can be too much teaching to the test. To abolish these and the tables, however, would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The challenge is to deal with these inadequate heads and to change the anticompetitive culture in our schools.

Chris Woodhead is a former Chief Inspector of Schools

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