FIRST, it is necessary to congratulate all those students who achieved excellent results. The results at this College were pleasing and we were delighted to note an improvement on the last year's good results. The College is by far the largest provider of advanced courses in the borough, with almost twice as many entered for A level as the next biggest provider.

It is disappointing, yet again, that the tables do not carry with them an indication of value-added: they do not, then, compare like with like. They do not indicate anything about the quality of the intake at 16 as measured by GCSE scores. We are proud of the fact that we open our doors to some students who might not be offered places elsewhere.

Such students perform above their potential very often, but may only achieve a modest score in the Performance Tables. Their achievements are a delight to us, as are those of our top 150 students who achieved an average score of over 22 points.

The government is attempting to decide on a value-added system. Once achieved, the information in the Performance Tables will be even more important and be fully informative of the performance on institutions.

Roy Whittle,

Principal,

Bolton Sixth Form College.