My hubby spends time on a Saturday or Sunday evening studying the football league tables after the weekend’s games have taken place. Now at the end of the season Manchester United have beaten Chelsea on goal difference, hubby is sure if that game 3 weeks ago had been won rather than drawn then Chelsea would be top. Football is a game (though many people would hate me to say so) and the league table is based on how many games you win, lose or draw and the number of goals you score or concede. What though are the league table the government has become so obsessed with publishing show?
As a parent I can apparently judge the worth of my son’s school by the league tables of GCSE and A levels plus some kind of value added score (whatever that is). His school is not at the top of the table, his experiences have been generally good, though there have been some moments when I have questioned teacher quality, the way in which particular things are done and the influence of the people around him. The league table shows me little, my son has turned out to be above average in a slightly below average school but probably pretty average within the country as a whole. His education continues, he is working hard and hopefully will turn out with pretty good grades which in turn will raise the average of his school.
What about hospital league tables? What do they tell us? The latest is based on a survey of those using the hospitals, and if you are a really sad person you can look at some kind of rating system, helpfully colour coded red, amber and green to give you an idea of how well they do on things such as infection control, cleanliness, perceived waiting times and dignity measures. All of this of course is relative and based on opinion. This is no exam league table, nor does it tell you how many goals have been scored. I have had a quick look at the scores for my two local hospital trusts, and sadly one of them is significantly worse than the other plus pretty much near the bottom of the pile. This trust is pretty much always near the bottom. It changes its CEO frequently, struggles with staff morale, and often has high staff turnover and vacancies. The local people are always being told how bad the hospitals are in the league tables and the trust is always having to defend itself. I wonder then if you were a patient and asked to fill in a national survey based on your perception of various things such as do the doctors wash their hands sufficiently, were you treated with dignity or was the food up to scratch, whether your perception would be coloured by what you already know. I am not saying the hospitals in this group are perfect (far from it) but I am not convinced they deserve to be classed as bottom of the pile. I also wonder how on earth the staff can improve not only reality but perceptions of it?
