Every so often, while flicking through TV listings or a social media stream, you’re reminded that a thing called Miss World still exists. And, for all the protests from organisers that it’s a more progressive and nuanced event these days, it still looks like a weird anachronism.

The same might be said of school league tables. You see plenty of evidence over the course of a year of a more rounded appreciation, these days, of what a purposeful education is. And then - boom - every state secondary in the land is suddenly told that the ultimate yardstick is how many students rack up five Highers. In 2021, that should seem no less ludicrous than a beauty pageant.

It leads to the nonsense of outstanding and innovative schools propping up these tables. You might as well rank schools by local house prices or free school meal entitlement: the tables would not be all that different.

Shelley McLaren, headteacher at Edinburgh’s Craigroyston Community High, wrote for Tes Scotland last week in response to the latest league tables, picking apart a verdict on her school that took no account of “how much we’ve done in all other parts of school life throughout the year”. We have previously documented the unstinting support for students - even after they leave school - and myriad innovations that make Craigroyston outstanding. McLaren underlined how galling it is to spend months after the publication of league tables reassuring students that they are not in a bad school.

There was a huge response to her piece. One headteacher spoke for many when he said: “League tables are outdated, a false representation and need to be scrapped.”

Yet criticism of media outlets that propagate these league tables is a distraction: we should focus on the culture that leads to such rankings. It was Nicola Sturgeon who, not so long ago, referred to five Highers as the “gold standard” of Scottish education - a term used by those behind last week’s tables to argue that they were merely holding education standards to account within parameters set by the first minister.

This persistent notion of a Highers-based “gold standard” shows we have a problem. Despite all the years that terms such as “parity of esteem” have been bandied about, and for all the efforts of schools to advance paths to success other than five Highers and university, there is a deep-rooted societal belief in a hierarchy of education where one route trumps all others. Newspapers, of course, would not publish league tables if they didn’t think there’d be huge interest in them.

All of us should question whether - in often insidious and subconscious ways - we actually underpin such views, even when we purportedly believe in a more rounded view of education. It would be powerful if headteachers at the top end of the league tables said: “Yes, we’re proud of how well our students have done but we know these rankings are unfair on many other outstanding schools.” And what about the novel idea we reported a while back, that there should not only be an exam results day but also another results day celebrating all other achievements in secondary school?

There is mounting concern over 2021 qualifications and the countless exams being set in a year when there weren’t supposed to be exams. Scottish education has, in many ways, broadened its focus over the past few decades, but 13 years of school still largely pivot on a two-term S5 dash to Higher exams. And, when those couldn’t happen for two years in a row, the inherent unfairness of that system - and the inability of those who preside over it to devise a satisfactory alternative - were laid bare.

School league tables, then, are highly problematic but they reflect a narrow and elitist view of education that still dominates - and a system that has not changed nearly as much as we are often led to believe.

@Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 21 May 2021 issue under the headline “League tables obscure gains that should be held in Higher regard”