UK:Two of Britain'ss most prominent private schools are to boycott this year's exam league tables, claiming they are misleading, hold down struggling schools and harm the teaching of activities such as sport, music and drama.
Eton and St Paul's will refuse to submit their results to the Independent Schools Council for publication in August, following the release of grades in A-levels and GCSEs.
The two schools, which regularly appear at the top of the national league tables, are also criticising the government's performance tables, published in January, in which they are required to continue to take part.
Martin Stephen, the headmaster of St Paul's boys' school in west London, urged other schools to follow their lead.
He said the tables were misleading to parents, in part because they treated exam results for subjects such as general studies as if they were the equivalent of traditional disciplines such as maths and physics.
"The league tables have exerted tyranny over schools for 15 years . . . they are a lie and I am a schoolmaster and I tell pupils not to tell lies and I think I should tell the government not to tell lies," Dr Stephen told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "They have not to my knowledge ever helped a school at all . . . What these league tables do is give complete nervous breakdowns to the schools at the top, in case they fall out of the top.
"And instead of acting like a life-jacket, they take a weak school and hold its head under water.
"No school I have ever known has been improved by league tables . . . What they do is put a brand on a school's forehead, they bring it into disrepute and they hold a school back." - (PA)