Cribsheet daily 12.01.11

It's league tables day for GCSEs and A-levels – lots of juicy new numbers for stats junkies to chew on

Keeping Cribsheet brief this morning, so that we can focus our attentions on the GCSE and A-level league tables. We have full tables for every school by local authority – which for the first time feature the percentage of pupils who retrospectively earned themselves an English baccalaureate.

Look out for lots of added extras on the datablog – which details expenditure per school and compares that to results.

• Lexy Topping is live-blogging reaction to the results – all comments and discussion will take place here.

• Jeevan Vasagar reports that 200 schools have failed to meet the government's new target of 35% good GCSEs and could find themselves taken over by more successful schools.

• Jessica Shepherd has discovered that a school threatened with closure is the most improved comprehensive in the England. Perry Beeches school in inner-city Birmingham has seen the proportion of its pupils with at least five A* to C grades, including English and maths, jump from 21% in 2007 to 74% this summer.

• As the BBC reports that just 1 in 6 pupils achieved the new English bac, there's a lot of talk among teachers on the web about what sort of advice they are going to give pupils choosing GCSE subjects. If they don't do the bac, will that put paid to their chances of getting into a "good" university?

And what's going to happen to those who teach non-bac subjects when no one wants to do them any more? Let's not forget that it was league tables that pushed students towards these "softer" subjects in the first place.

• @warwickmansell tweets:

"Eton, Wellington, Oundle, Charterhouse, Cheltenham Ladies College all scoring zero on new English bac measure."

• Andrew Chubb, the principal, of Archbishop Sentamu academy in Kingston-upon-Hull, has written a blog aimed at Michael Gove and criticising the English baccalaureate for being too narrow.

"Archbishop Sentamu academy deplores the narrow focus of the proposed English baccalaureate. This reform has been rushed though, not thought through.

It is a straitjacket that will constrain student potential, rather than a structure which will promote broad achievement.

It caters for the interests of the few, at the expense of recognising the achievements of the many.

As an academy, we will therefore be developing our own range of baccalaureates, catering for our students' individual and personal interests and aptitudes."

(Thanks to @SchoolDuggery for tweeting this.)

More education news from the Guardian

• History lessons are becoming a thing of the past, teachers tell Michael Gove

• Edward Woollard, 18, the student protester who threw a fire extinguisher from roof of Millbank Tower in London during the student fees protest jailed for two years and eight months

• The gap between the official and unofficial student movements is growing – and Aaron Porter is no longer regarded as a leader, writes student activist Mary Robertson

• And David Miliband is to do a bit of teaching at his old school

Education stories from around the web

• Following the story in EducationGuardian yesterday about heads urging needy families to apply for free school meals, the BBC reports that Middlesborough council says 3,000 children are missing out on free school meals because they do not realise they are eligible. It too is motivated by funding – it's missing out on about £1.2m because for every child getting free dinners, it gets £430 to spend on education.

• Michael Gove's speech at the Education World Forum yesterday is on the Department for Education website. He stressed autonomy, reducing bureaucracy, freeing schools from local authority control – all the rhetoric of academies.

• A government commissioned report into teaching standards in Scotland has recommended trainees undergo basic literacy and numeracy tests.

• Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph, is not at all happy about the possibility that Simon Hughes could make it harder for private school pupils to get into the top universities.

Warwick Mansell (yes, again) has blogged for the Local Schools Network on why Gove has ditched the idea of Sweden as a model for schooling.

Calling all university administrators…

We need you to check we have the right codes for your institution's courses so that we can reflect your position accurately in our University Guide 2012. Please consult our dedicated website - there's a deadline looming for any changes you may wish to make.

Competition

Children aged between seven and 14 can now enter the Young Human Rights reporter of the year competition, run by learnnewsdesk, the Guardian's online news service for schools, and Amnesty International. A winner and two runners-up in the primary and secondary school categories will win a trip to Amnesty International and the Guardian headquarters in London as well as an MP3 recorder. The closing date for entries is 14 February.