I really did. And was ashamed to be doing so because, like all sensible parents, I understand full well with my rational mind, that league tables are nothing but crude snapshots of school performance, to be viewed with a hefty dose of caution and scepticism.

But we’re in the throes of moving. And therefore not at all rational any more.

In our house, all sensible thought has flown out of the window, to be replaced by neurotic study of train timetables, newspaper property ads - and school league tables.

Our fingers move feverishly up and down the columns. Are the schools our children will be going to as good as the ones they are in now? Are the schools they are in now as good as the ones we turned our backs on two years ago? Are any of them as good as the schools our friends’ children are in? And, what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if we should really be moving to Hertfordshire? The schools look pretty good there. No matter that the answers to all these questions come within spitting distance of each other. Awash on our sea of anxiety, a 1 per cent difference can keep us awake all night, even though in reality it means nothing more than that two students shared a dodgy doner kebab on the day before their final French paper and didn’t quite pull off the performance expected.

But we’re looking for reassurance, not reality. We’re looking for answers. Good or bad. Black or white. Ranks, ratings, numbers.

“Look!” we cry in delight, holding up the headline ‘Islington schools at bottom of league’. At least we did the right thing, when we moved away from there!” When we catch sight of another headline, “Exam leagues meaningless”, our eyes slide quickly past it.

Luckily the rest of the country seems to be acting in a far more responsible way. After four years, the league tables have come to be like recycling and bicycle lanes and Sunday shopping - one of those things it’s hard to imagine life without. On the contrary, it seems incredible, now, that school performance was ever considered so sensitive it had to be kept a secret.

Yes, there are bad things about them. They have grave limitations in what they show, and - more worryingly - may be grinding schools so finely through the exam mill that the less able are increasingly thrown out with the chaff.

But what seemed apparent this year was the useful role they are beginning to play in honing our general understanding of how schools work.

We non-educationists might not have either the time or inclination to study the technicalities of how you measure value-added performance, but at least we are starting to understand what value-added is, and why it matters. We know why the data on unauthorised absences and pupils with special needs have been included in this year’s tables, and understand better than we used to about not judging schools without knowing more about the students who come through their doors.

Yet judge we do, and rightly so, again thanks to the league tables which are levering up the lid of social determinism, and showing just what some schools can achieve against the odds.

Newspapers have always loved those lurid “school from hell” profiles, but now they’re being offered a handy “most improved” peg, on which to hang quite the opposite sort of stories about schools, which with diligence and hard work, have hauled themselves up by their bootstraps.

Homework clubs are not normal stuff of headlines, but good-news stories about how St Thomas More Roman Catholic High School brought in lunchtime and after-school “clinics”, or Whalley Range High School tightened up its discipline and introduced step-aerobic classes, in order to climb the ladder to success, make compelling reading - and raise inevitable questions in the public mind. Like if there, then why not elsewhere?

These days, of course, league tables always come with health warnings. Never just read the tables, the sages advise parents. Be sure to visit schools as well.

Alas, what that advice ignores is the fact that school visiting is a serious art - and one that few parents ever master.

Partly it’s sheer terror. Anyone who had a headmistress such as mine is always going to be reduced to pulp at the very first whiff of that distinctive school office smell.

Then there’s the all-pervasive P J O’Rourke mego (my eyes glaze over) factor, which comes into play when anyone starts to recite the specifications of the school’s computer network, or last year’s geography field trip destinations.

Mainly, though its sheer frustration. Most schools dutifully trot parents round the sports hall and dining room and library, with a guide pouring facts about school-bus discipline and the after-school modelling club into their ear, while what the parents want to do is loiter beneath the open windows of a third-year history class in order to get some handle on what’s really going on in the school. The best schools are the one that leave pupils to take you round. And the best pupils are the indiscreet ones. From them you have at least some hope of hearing the real dope on the school’s most boring teachers, and how many junior alcoholics are thought to be on roll.

Occasionally, too, you might even catch a glimpse of what a school really can do. Like a recent sixth-form guide of ours who, when asked to what extent students felt they “owned” their school, reeled back in clear teenage dismay, “Oh God,” he cried. “No one’s ever asked that before! I’ve no idea what to say.” He chewed on his lip and his cheeks grew pink. He swallowed, and frowned. “Would you mind,” he said, “if I think about that a bit, while we walk on round? Only I don’t think I can answer it off the top of my head.” We didn’t. He did. And after he’d done so, he delivered an impressively thoughtful, honest and reasoned response.

Never mind the computer networks, it’s well-educated pupils, like him, that schools should put on display for visiting parents.