On 25 January, I logged on to the 2011 Secondary School Performance Tables early access to publication data. But sadly, all was not well. From a phone call to “John” I learned that one of the Department for Education’s servers was playing up. He suggested we try later. Later on, a message on the site said “server error - the resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable”. Given the absolute need for schools to operate in our data-driven world, this is ironic - the DfE failing to meet its own deadlines.

Ian Smith, Cumbria.