A HEADTEACHER has defended his school after new performance tables ranked it as the lowest in the area.

Honywood Community Science School, in Coggeshall, achieved an overall rating of well below average in the new provisional Progress 8 figures.

Headteacher Simon Mason said: “It may be the case that some are getting fed up with reading what may look like excuses that I concoct each year to explain away the fact that the school, under my leadership, has declined.

“If you take that view, I don’t agree with you, but I can understand it is difficult to maintain faith in our school’s achievements when it looks like others are doing so much better.

“Our national obsession with measuring the impact of education, often leaves us with a false sense of what is really going on.

“If you only care about what is easy to measure, then it is hardly surprising that many schools in the system will focus all their efforts on securing what looks like the best numbers for their schools.”

Half of the students at Honywood studied three individual sciences, and nearly nine in ten studied a modern language.

Mr Mason, who is due to leave in April 2018, blamed the quality of marking, a lack of like for like comparisons and sitting exams early for the poor results.

He said: “We carry out extensive investigation into every outcome learners achieve and we compare year on year to see whether each subject is improving or not.

“Our data set goes back many years, prior to me joining the school in 2002, and the curriculum we offer has been pretty consistent over that time, so we know the comparisons we undertake are as valid as they can be.”