Teachers at Canons High School in Canons Park are protesting to Harrow East MP Tony McNulty over the Government's decision to drop a grading system to measure a school's progress.

This years official school league tables use a starring system instead.

The Department for Education had graded the progress of schools based on pupils' results in the national curriculum tests at 14 and the same pupils' results in their GCSEs this year, but decided not to publish its findings.

Despite Canons' position at the bottom of Harrow's table, the DfE had told the Shaldon Road school in September that it had been awarded an A for excellent progress.

Deputy headteacher Annette Stuart said she and her colleagues were outraged by the last-minute decision to drop the grading.

"Headteacher associations put pressure on the Government to drop the grades because it would make independent schools look bad because they tend to get in bright, middle class kids but their level of attainment tends to stay the same," she said.

"At schools like ours we work our socks off to get our kids, many of whom come from difficult backgrounds, to do the best they can. We had a particularly weak GCSE group this year but they exceeded their predicted grades based on their Sats tests at 14."

Like many high schools on the edges of the borough,Canons is losing potential pupils to schools with sixth forms in surrounding boroughs and it is concerned that the raw results published will put even more parents off sending their children there.

"How can parents possibly identify the good schools without this information?" Ms Stuart asked. "We are very angry and have written to Tony McNulty because we feel the Labour Government is being very wimp-like."

A DfE spokeswoman said it had dropped the grading system because it felt the information compiled would not be an accurate reflection of all schools' progress because some could not supply the information needed.

"We are hoping to publish a more fully developed system next year," she said.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.