TURNING THE TELEGRAPH TABLES; Education Reporter LUCY LYNCH Takes a Close-Up Look at a New Measure of How Your Child's School Is Doing - and Two Experts Give Opposing Views on Its Introduction

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Byline: LUCY LYNCH

THE Government has a new way of measuring pupils' success in traditional academic subjects.

The English Baccalaureate has now taken its place alongside GCSE results as a barometer of how well schools are performing.

Though not presently a qualification, it is a measure for recording pupils who have secured a C grade or better across a core of academic subjects - English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language.

The government brought it in amid concerns over a huge rise in the number of non-academic qualifications being studied by secondary school pupils, which it argues do not carry real weight for entry …