Revealed: the top ten schools in London - but figures show 30,000 children are being taught at underperforming secondaries

Evening Standard analysis ranks top ten schools on the percentage of pupils passing five GCSEs with good grades, including English and maths
Almost 30,000 London children are being taught in underperforming secondary schools
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Anna Davis @_annadavis26 January 2018

Almost 30,000 London children are being taught in underperforming secondaries, despite schools in the capital outshining the rest of the country.

Evening Standard analysis of new exam data reveals that 31 schools in London failed to meet the government’s minimum floor target for GCSE results.

Although London had the lowest proportion of underperforming schools in the country - 6.9 per cent compared with 12 per cent nationally - the proportion has increased since last year when in London just 3.1 per cent of schools fell below the threshold.

It means that this year there are 27,000 pupils being taught in secondary schools that are underperforming.

The top ten schools in London

 

Tiffin Girls’ School, Kingston upon Thames

Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet

Nonsuch High School for Girls, Sutton

Wallington County Grammar School, Sutton

St Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar school, Bromley

Wilson’s School, Sutton

Ilford County High School, Redbridge

St Michael’s Catholic Grammar School, Barnet

Townley Grammar School, Bexley

The Latymer School, Enfield

(* Ranked by the Evening Standard on the percentage of pupils passing five GCSEs with good grades, including English and maths.)

A school is judged to be underperforming if pupils fail to make enough progress across eight subjects, with particular weight given to English and maths - a new measure known as Progress 8.

This replaces the previous five A* to C grade measure that schools had previously been judged on.

Nationally the number of underperforming schools is 365 - up from 282 the year before.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said the rise in under-performing schools is because of technical changes to the way performance is calculated.

Despite the rise in underperforming schools, results in London surpassed those in the rest of the country.

New analysis reveals that of the 25 local authorities with no underperforming schools, 16 are in London.

And the top 12 authorities in the country based on progress 8 scores are also all in London.

This is the first year that results for English and maths GCSEs were graded from 9 to 1, while other subjects received the traditional A*-G grades.

In London 51,000 pupils passed five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, (or 9 to 4) including English and maths - while 32,000 failed to do so.

School leaders criticised the new way of ranking schools for being too complicated.

The 16 local authorities in London with no underperforming schools

 

Barnet 

Tower Hamlets 

Waltham Forest 

Hounslow

Southwark

Brent

Hackney

Harrow

Wandsworth 

Haringey 

Islington 

Kingston upon Thames 

Westminster 

Merton 

Richmond upon Thames 

Kensington and Chelsea

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “These changes are the main reason why there has been an increase in the number of schools which are deemed to be below the ‘floor standard’ for Progress 8.

“It is extremely unfair that more schools find themselves in this situation because of complex changes to the way in which this is calculated.”

School Standards Minister Nick Gibb praised London for leading the way in education.

He singled out Harris Academy Battersea for praise, saying: “Almost 9 in 10 pupils attending Harris Academy Battersea – which is ranked fourth in the country for pupil progress (Progress 8) – come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Responding to the government’s drive for more pupils to be entered into the core academic subjects, Harris Academy Battersea now has 81.7 per cent of pupils completing the EBacc.”

But he warned that more must be done to ensure pupils continue studying languages.

In 2005, 60 per cent of pupils studied a language at GCSE, but in 2010 the figure was 40 per cent. This year it is 47 per cent.

He added: “London is a melting pot of talent, creativity and entrepreneurship. It is the financial and cultural capital of the world, where businesses benefit from the skills and talents of London’s population.

“Through technology, distance is becoming less important, but the need for shared language has grown. Government has a role in facilitating trade, but business leaders and entrepreneurs know that relationships are at the heart of any deal.”

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