We recruit strongly in south-east Peterborough and the surrounding villages but our pupils include substantial numbers of disadvantaged children, poor readers and “exclusion rejects”. However, the Government does not allow for explanations or excuses. Stanground had hit the relegation zone and the manager’s job seemed to be on the line. Staff morale sank and people skulked in the corridors muttering about discipline.

I was ill-prepared to cope, despite years spent massaging the figures at Stanground. My mind-set was that children earn results, not schools. Surely, I thought, performance figures only map the incidence of privilege and its opposite? If our efforts to date had failed to produce the right score, where was the great leap forward to come from?

Our new vice-principal’s resourceful, optimistic approach helped us convert a threat into a challenge: of course we could influence performance tables based on headline figures. If a dozen - or even 10 - children hit Cs instead of Ds, in just one more subject, we would motor up the table. The press isn’t interested in Ds, Es or Fs, whatever they represent for the students concerned. Only one currency matters: the percentage of the year group obtaining five A-Cs.

Within weeks we created Charting Success, a new policy designed to focus pupils and staff on the key indicators. Subject teachers supplied estimated grades so that we could identify youngsters with a realistic prospect of five A-Cs. Senior managers targeted five or six candidates each and tracked their progress from January to June, through fortnightly interviews and regular reports from staff.

Year 11 was delighted with the attention and extra pupils were targeted after complaints that we had left some people out. We offered advice on study skills and revision as well as ensuring that coursework requirements were met. Staff in charge of curriculum areas, traumatised by the 1993 figures, followed the senior management lead, scrutinising those on the grades C and D borderline with renewed zeal.

We sharpened our internal support and evaluation systems by assigning each senior manager three hours non-contact time to audit curriculum areas and by appointing full-time year assistants. With curriculum managers, the auditors evaluated classroom learning against the Office for Standards in Education’s Framework for Inspection. Selected students dropped subjects in which they are struggling to concentrate on those where a C grade was possible. Coursework was given top priority. The Year 11 assistant supervised their work in the resources centre, where they had access to word processors and photocopiers.

With an eye to self-justification if the results remained poor, we also charted GCSE performance against objective tests. Four out of five year groups have completed the National Foundation for Educational Research’s cognitive ability battery (verbal, non-verbal, quantitative); Year 11 was entered in the Yellis scheme (which compares Stanground’s actual GCSE results with a Newcastle University prediction based on a pre-test and national patterns); and we are studying gender influences on learning through questionnaires, interviews and observation. Curriculum areas received printouts of their value-added scores from Yellis while our assessment team provided tables comparing Stanground subject results with national totals.

Our year teams also tightened the management of time, reducing opportunities to drift off task and off course. The mock examination timetable minimised unnecessary “study leave”. In the final weeks before the “big bang”, lessons which ran out of steam were reallocated to revision.

In short, we flung ourselves with enthusiasm into a totally alien project, driven by professional pride and fear. As we worked, we found the sharp focus on outcomes stimulated by OFSTED and the performance tables increasingly helpful. We remain sceptical about numbers in education, but important ideas are emerging from our new, statistical approach. We debate why boys score an average half grade lower than girls and study classroom activities with sharper eyes than before. Why did it take a disaster before we asked whether something could be done about the boys, who fail to complete homework twice as often as the girls?

The l994 examination results yielded the first dividend. Thirty per cent achieved five A-Cs and for the first time ever there were more C grades than Ds. Fifty-five per cent of targeted students achieved the objective.

Yellis (flawed, we now think, by an unresolved difficulty in converting decimal point predictions into full grades) indicated positive value-added scores and we moved to a comfortable mid-table position in Peterborough. We may not make the play-offs for promotion, but we have recovered self-respect.

My past thoughts return to me. Have we made progress or was it all a coincidence? Have we improved the numbers or the quality of learning? After all, the cognitive test battery produces an NFER slant very similar to our GCSE grade curve. Perhaps 1994‘s Year 11 was a good cohort that would have done well without Charting Success; perhaps we targeted pupils who were going to make it on their own. But, illusion or not, we daren’t stop now.

Bernard Barker is principal of Stanground College, Peterborough