By Aled ap Dafydd BBC Wales political unit
Pupils (generic) Schools will be banded according to performance
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The head of one of Wales' oldest schools has claimed confidence has already been lost in a new way to categorise performance.
Neil Foden of Ysgol Friars in Bangor, Gwynedd calls the banding system, which starts next month, "imperfect".
"Schools don't understand it, the impression we get is that civil servants don't understand it, so what chance have parents got?" he said.
The Welsh government said it offered a clear picture of school performance.
Banding, according to the Welsh government, uses national data on school performance to group schools according to where they are on their improvement journey in comparison to other schools in Wales.
The banding model uses four groups of data:
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“Start Quote
Neil Foden
This system is an imperfect way of measuring schools”
End Quote Neil Foden Headteacher
* Some GCSE results
* Free school meal eligibility
* Attendance record
* Progress over a number of years
The original Friars School dates back to the mid 16th Century, while the modern secondary school has had a record year, with 80% of pupils gaining A to C grades in A level exams.
But Mr Foden claimed that banding could be misleading and might not truly reflect a school's performance.
"This system is an imperfect way of measuring schools," he said.
'Misleading'
"For example, if we were able to recruit seven additional children from disadvantaged households who are eligible for free school meals even though we had done nothing to improve our own performance, we would almost certainly go up a quartile.
"Even though we had done nothing our performance would suddenly look better.
"Clearly that isn't a healthy state of affairs.
"It could be misleading."
Primary school Plaid Cymru said the Welsh government's branding plans would undermine schools
The new system comes into effect in December but schools have already been told provisionally which band they are in.
The Welsh government says that banding is very different to introducing league tables.
But Plaid Cymru is concerned that the new system might be perceived in that way.
"Plaid Cymru does not want our schools to be micro-managed," said Plaid education spokesman Simon Thomas.
"The Labour minister is seeking to name and shame schools he considers to be underperforming, but this could only undermine them further.
'Key component'
"The education minister has himself conceded that league tables are 'simplistic' and 'destructive' yet continues to establish them in Wales by another name.
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In the long term, banding, along with the other measures we are putting in place, will help us make effective improvements to our education system”
End Quote Welsh government
"What the minister has announced so far will only serve to highlight the gap between 'good' schools and 'bad' schools without addressing the reasons for failure. "
The Welsh government said banding would be "at the heart" its school improvement agenda and was a key component in its programme for governing.
"It's not about labelling, naming or shaming, or creating a crude league table," said a Welsh government statement.
"It is about putting schools into groups to identify which need our support and which we can learn from.
"The provisional banding information we've already put in place has been extremely useful in highlighting how schools are performing.
"In the long term, banding, along with the other measures we are putting in place, will help us make effective improvements to our education system."
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