No evidence exam targets work
There is "no quantified evidence" about whether threatening to close schools affects their pupils' performance, the National Audit Office says.
Its report on the use of rewards and sanctions in the public sector said people believed there was an effect but those judgements were subjective.
It said value added measures of school performance were good practice.
But "threshold" measures, such as the proportion getting good GCSEs, could distort schools' behaviour.
Motivation
The audit office (NAO) report concludes: "We found no quantified evidence of the effect of sanctions and rewards on levels of performance for the programmes in the survey."
