The North's Education Minister, Mr Martin McGuinness, has announced he will scrap school performance tables with immediate effect following criticism by teachers, unions and parents.
Instead, individual schools will publish their own annual results in reports sent to parents. Mr McGuinness said the original aim of allowing parents and principals to compare schools' performances had been defeated by the fact that individual circumstances were not taken into account.
The Department had received more than 1,000 responses in its consultation exercise over league tables, 75 per cent of which were in opposition to the tables, he added.
"Many respondents felt the tables were divisive and failed to offer schools the opportunity to give parents a rounded picture of the school," he said. "In future, schools will be able to set their performance in the context of information on the school as a whole. Parents will receive all the information they require on any given school from a single source and be in a better position to take a decision on the school's overall performance."
Teachers' unions and local politicians broadly welcomed Mr McGuinness's decision. The regional officer for the NASUWT union, Mr Tom McKee, said the published results had been "a spurious form of competition that leads to harmful league tables being published in newspapers".
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation's senior official, Ms Nuala O'Donnell, congratulated the Minister on his decision, describing the tables as "fundamentally flawed and potentially discriminatory".
An SDLP MLA, Ms Patricia Lewsley, said her party had long campaigned for a parity of esteem for academic and vocational training, something which had not been provided by the tables. She was, however, disappointed that Mr McGuinness had not commissioned research into how to present performance improvements achieved by particular schools.
The Alliance Party spokeswoman on education, Ms Eileen Bell, said she was pleased the tables would be scrapped as they had clearly undervalued non-academic achievements by pupils.
Mr McGuinness was criticised by Mr Sammy Wilson, of the DUP, who said the Minister was "seeking to endear himself to the trade unions".
The Conservative Party, which introduced the league tables in 1993, said Mr McGuinness's "regrettable" decision would deprive parents of vital information.