THE plans for all schools to set themselves annual performance targets and publish the results of how they achieved them should not be resisted by the teaching profession.

To begin with, one good reason is that this new system will enable teachers to qualify the school league tables and the results of national tests that they dislike.

For, as they complain, the tables are based on crude information and, so, do not allow wholly-fair comparisons to be made of schools' performances. With this new scheme, they can define those raw results to include such factors as an individual school's intake and the social conditions or ethnic mix of the community it serves.

Thus, they are being given the opportunity to give a more true picture rather than a crude one.

Furthermore, with a template of national "benchmarks" for guidance, schools will be able allowed to tailor the performance targets themselves - so that reasonable and achievable aims can be set according to local conditions and past performances.

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