Each year the UK Government publish ‘school league tables’ holding secondary schools to account for the average progress and final exam results of their pupils. Our work critiques their three most recent progress measures: Contextual Value-Added (CVA, 2006-2010), Expected Progress (EP, 2011-2015) and Progress 8 (P8, 2016-).

• CVA recognised that poor pupils make less progress than their richer peers and adjusted for this to make fair and meaningful comparisons between schools. That some schools misused CVA to set differential targets for pupils with different socioeconomic and ethnic status reflects the perverse incentives that arise from high-stakes testing;

• EP was an ideological shift away from CVA whereby the Government declared all pupils must make the same progress, irrespective of their prior attainment and socioeconomic circumstances. This severely biased EP in favour of Grammar and other schools with advantaged intakes;

• P8 represents a partial return to CVA in that it again recognises that pupils with higher prior attainment make more progress. However, it continues to ignore the very large socioeconomic and demographic differences between schools which also drive results.

Policy makers, schools and parents should view progress measures and school league tables more generally with far more caution and scepticism than has often been the case to date.