TWO Furness headteachers say the new headline progress measure should be viewed with caution as it is does not give a clear picture of their schools which were labelled among "England’s worst” in the national press.

Walney School and Chetwynde School, in Barrow, were among 365 schools in England falling below the government's floor target for Progress 8. One in eight of England's mainstream secondary school were under the performance threshold.

Progress 8 is a score which shows how much progress pupils made between the end of Key Stage Two at primary school and the end of Key Stage Four at secondary school, compared to pupils across England who go similar results at the end of primary school. This is based on results in up to eight qualifications, including English and maths.

A score above zero means pupils made more progress on average, while a below zero score means less progress was made on average. A score of less than minus 0.5 was below the target.

Walney School, which had a score of minus 0.68, and Chetwynde School, with a score of minus 0.51, were labelled as being among 'England's worst schools' in The Mirror's list, along with four other Cumbria schools.

John Richardson, headteacher at Walney School said the list and the measure does not reflect some excellent GCSE results and improvements. He said the label is a "sweeping judgement".

While Chetwynde School headteacher Sian Jeffreys said the Progress 8 measure is "meaningless" at her school as it does not include a very large proportion of its students who did not do the primary SATs. When Chetwynde was an independent school it did not do SATs testing, which the Progress 8 score is based on.

Cumbria's Progress 8 figure of minus 0.13 is lower than the English average of minus 0.03.

The teaching unions have also warned about judging a school just on a Progress 8 measure because of many complexities.

Walney head, Mr Richardson said: "Walney students achieved some excellent GCSE results, with the greatest proportion ever achieving a grade four in both English and mathematics – the only measure that remains directly comparable to the old C grade benchmark.

"Parents, students and staff collectively recognise the transformative journey that our school is on and it is therefore very unfortunate that national newspapers felt it appropriate to brand our school, along with 364 of England’s other secondary schools - one in every eight - as 'England’s Worst Schools'.

"This sweeping judgement was based on one headline Department for Education measure of a Progress 8 floor standard, a measure that has been recognised by both the DfE and professional associations as being extremely volatile this year. Throughout this academic year the school has undergone monitoring visits from both Ofsted and the DfE, both of whom have reported very positively, in terms of not only the rich educational experience our students enjoy but also the picture of ongoing improvement in GCSE outcomes.

"We are extremely proud of the ongoing improvements that the hard work of our students and staff are achieving and look forward to celebrating the very promising looking results our Year 11 students are forecast to achieve this summer.

"If anyone has been concerned or upset by recent newspaper headlines in relation to the performance tables measure of Progress 8, I would strongly encourage them to come and take a tour of our school with me and see our fantastic culture of learning and achievement for themselves."

Chetwynde headteacher, Ms Jeffreys said: "Chetwynde School still has a very large proportion of its older students who do not count at all in these league tables because they were in Chetwynde Independent School which did not do SATs testing. Our position in the league tables is therefore currently based on only a proportion (69 per cent) of our students and are therefore meaningless when assessing our pupil progress.

"The young people who do not count in the statistics made steady progress from a very young age with us, they did very well in exams and have gone on to colleges and apprenticeships and yet they do not count at all in the data. The 69 per cent who do count came at various points of entry, many as late as Year 10 or 11."

Ms Jeffreys said Chetwynde's Progress 8 figure will be affected for another two years, until they have SATs data for full cohorts.

The head said their is a similar "unrepresentative" situation in the Chetwynde primary school as progress of Year Six children is based on how they did in their Year Two SATs.