London Comprehensive Schools

Nigel Ford's picture
 0
I was listening to a recent discussion on the radio between Katherine Birbalsingh and John Bangs of the NUT and one of the remarks John Bangs made was the vast improvement of London comprehensive schools over the last few years.

Comparing the GCSE results of schools in virtually all London boroughs with those of schools in more affluent counties like Sussex, Hants, Devon, Dorset, Beds, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincs etc it was interesting to see that there is now a parity in results between the London schools and the aforementioned counties (which exclude the large cities) which is surprising given that these counties don't have the same scale of social problems of the Capital.

It is obviously a tremendous credit to the staff, teachers, governors and parents as well as the pupils who have worked hard to bring about this improvement.

At the time my eldest child was starting his comprehensive school, the same year as the Blairs in 1995, and league tables were in their infancy which gave parents information of how schools were performing, I recall reading of an article in a national newspaper of how a parent with primary school aged children was selling up his house in London and moving to Chichester on the sole criterion that the schools would be better in that area. He and his family were going to start attending church not for any religous motive but to cynically ensure his kids got into this top performing CofE school so he could avoid paying private school fees had he stayed in London.

Thanks to the improvement of London schools hopefully this practise of moving out of the area is largely a thing of the past.
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