LONDON’S secondary school districts have claimed all top 10 slots for academic progress in new national league tables which reveal the capital’s continuing dominance in education.
Ealing recorded the highest score in England for Progress 8, a new government benchmark which calculates how far pupils advance between primary school and year 11, according to analysis of data from every major local authority by the Standard.
School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said: “Schools across London have not only achieved very high standards in their GCSE results, but they’ve also helped pupils from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds realise their potential.”
Progress 8 is a complex calculation which compares the progress pupils make over eight key subjects including maths and English.
Barnet and Merton were both ranked “well above average” in our analysis, with 18 out of the top 20 best-performing major districts all in London. Redbridge, Westminster, Brent and Kingston upon Thames were all among those performing above average.
The tables mark the near-completion of former education secretary Michael Gove’s GCSE shake-up — with tougher content and coursework scrapped in favour of final exams.
Almost all exams now give numerical grades from 9 to 1 instead of the old A* to G scale.
It also show that teenagers in parts of London are more than three times as likely to take a suite of academic GCSEs than their peers in parts of the north.