By trying do to the right thing School Banding hides the problem.

Ive been looking at the Welsh Assemblies  Banding for schools you can download an excel version here .

Its difficult to extrapolate any useful data from this because

Within each category, a school's score is modified to take into account the percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals. This allows for the challenges of running a school in a deprived area.

Most of the categories also take into account a school's progress over time, to reward schools that are making improvements in performance.

I have compared the Band 1 and Band 5 schools yn the area of free meals and  if you weren't aware of the fact that the information was "weighted" towards Schools in deprived areas then you may be led to assume that   social deprivation did not have a marked effect on education standards.

What we really need is a before and after these factors are taken into account .

But do Goverments really point to people the influence social deprevation have on Childrens Education.

The Welsh Assembly are right to take these factors into account and the percentage of freemeals  is a useful benchmark but it musn't be used to hide the very problem they are taken into account.