HEADTEACHERS and education officials have objected to the publication of league tables from their inception.

Even though this year's primary league tables show East Lancashire, as whole, is on target, it has not stopped the criticism.

Councillor Alan Whittaker, cabinet member for education and young people at Lancashire County Council, said tables were ambiguous.

He said: "Because an individual school has a lower proportion of pupils achieving the target -- level four -- it does not imply that it is performing less well.

"It may be performing very well and have a high proportion of pupils for whom attaining level three is a major achievement.

"Schools should be judged by a broad range of measures alongside the performance tables."

Andrew Astbury, headteacher at St Paul's CE Primary, Hoddlesden -- which achieved the best improvement in the league tables across the board in Blackburn with Darwen at 30 per cent-- said: "I'd be happy to see them stopped tomorrow.

"It's very pleasing to see such a dramatic increase, but I don't approve of the league tables.

"They take no notice of the value that is added by schools -- and we won't be taking any more notice of them this year than we did last year."

Burnley St James Lanehead headteacher Jennifer Brunskill saw her school get 100 per cent in maths and 97 per cent in English.

She said: "It was a partnership between the children, the teachers and the parents, who were very supportive.

"They were an excellent year and it was very emotional last summer when they left.

"But other schools where children do not get such good results will have worked just as hard.

"That's where the tables are unfair."

Staff at Our Lady and St Hubert's RC Primary School, Great Harwood, were celebrating after pupils achieved 100 per cent marks in the performance league tables, but headteacher Anthony O'Neill said: "The league tables can be an injustice."

And at Lower Darwen Primary School, where pupils achieved near perfect marks, headteacher Susan Morton said: " It depends so much on the intake, and what comes out in the tables can be very upsetting."

The National Association of Head Teachers said today's school tables presented a "distorted picture" because they did not take into account schools which had pupils with special educational needs.

A spokesman for the National Union of Teachers added: "We are not very impressed with league tables.

"Schools are not like football clubs, where you can go out and buy star players. Schools must deal with the pupils they have got."