Foreword by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment

These secondary school performance tables provide an invaluable store of information for parents on the achievements of pupils in their local schools in the area and in England as a whole. I hope you will find them interesting in themselves, and helpful when talking to your child's current or new school, or thinking about which secondary school he or she might attend.

The provision of better information on school performance to parents and local communities and to our other partners in the education service, is key to our overall strategy for raising standards in our schools. These tables show the achievements of pupils in a wide range of academic and vocational qualifications, and how those results have changed over the past few years.

We have also provided a measure of the progress made in schools from the National Curriculum Key Stage 3 tests taken by pupils in 1996 to GCSEs and GNVQs taken this year, compared with the progress in all schools in the country as a whole. From this you can see that while the results of some schools are lower compared with those in the country as a whole they are helping their pupils make good progress in their education. It also shows that there are some schools whose results are better than average which still have room to make more progress.

This year's GCSE results are a particular credit to teachers, pupils and parents, given the demands of the new generation of GCSE syllabuses. GNVQs are also a popular option, and the enthusiasm for them is shown in the results.

The information on rates of pupil absence from schools helps to throw light on the amount of time pupils are out of school - both with permission and without. Improving school attendance is also crucial to our drive to raise standards. Truancy from school contributes directly to the problems of exclusion from society, which we are determined to tackle.

A separate set of "16-18" tables includes the achievements of students of that age group in Further Education sector colleges and schools with sixth forms in the more advanced qualifications. We have also published a supplement to the secondary tables showing how "value added" by schools might be shown in the future.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP