Haberdashers Askes Hatcham College Results

[AlwaysBeOnTime]

Thinking of applying to send our kids to Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College in SE London but am concerned to see the GCSE statistics advertised on their website don't match those on the Department for Education's performance table by some margin.

The school website advertises that 70% of the 2015 cohort achieved 5 A-C's with English and Maths.
www.haaf.org.uk/Exam-Results

The DfE says only 58% for the same measure (down from 64% the year before and 70% the year before that) which would suggest a pretty rapid decline in achievement.
www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=135073

I spoke to the DfE, who assured me their figures are right and that the school must have given an 'estimate' on their website - or that perhaps they are including resits or less demanding qualifications that are no longer valid in national school assessments. The school itself was unclear when I enquired, saying they must have just interpreted the results differently.

Of course I know statistics don't tell the whole story but this is a pretty important figure for a school to get right and shouldn't really be so open to interpretation.
Does anyone have any idea why the school's numbers are inaccurate?
Or more importantly - can any existing parents give an insight into how well the school is doing and if their children are happy there?
All thoughts gratefully received.

[admission]

I think you will probably find that the school put pupils in early for some GCSEs, especially English. The DfE changed the rules last year (or maybe the year before last) so that they only count the first time they sat the test. So if they took it a year early and got a D, rather than the all important C then they would re-enter and then probably get the C.
From now on you will probably not see a large difference because most schools have realised that early entry is not helping their figures as published by the DfE.

[AlwaysBeOnTime]

Thanks very much for your thoughts. Am just learning about this early exam entry business then! Didn't realise this trend was going on. So I guess the school is still in the process of adapting to fit in better with the DfE's new restrictions on not reporting resits... meaning it must be scoring 58% without including resits but can still claim on its website that it scores 70% including resits. Trouble is it makes it hard to know how the school would perform when it moves to single year exam entry again.

Would still be grateful to receive any other thoughts about the general approach of the school - the behaviour, pastoral care, teaching etc. - if anyone out there has a view?

[MickeyinDisneyland]

This is my experience of Askes:

oldaskean.wordpress.com/