the 10 top-performing primary schools in London

Educational reporter(wp/es):

Children leaving primary school in London outperformed pupils in the rest of the country in the three Rs, the Evening Standard can reveal. 

The capital’s 11-year-olds were the highest performing in reading, writing and maths despite controversial changes to the Sats tests which came in this year. 

New figures show that the highest performing local authorities were in London – with 99 per cent of the capital’s schools meeting the Government’s expected standard. 

Kensington and Chelsea topped the list of local authorities in the capital with 70 per cent of pupils getting the required level in reading, writing and maths. The City of London got 89 per cent but has just one primary school. 

Pupils in Bromley and Richmond followed on 67 per cent, with Sutton on 65 per cent and Greenwich and Hackney both on 64 per cent. 

It came as new analysis found that 70 per cent of the capital’s schools faced budget cuts under plans by the Government to change the school funding formula. 

This year’s Sats tests have been fraught with controversy with teachers raising concerns about their difficulty - particularly the reading paper – and schools and unions arguing that data gathered from the results was misleading.

In May, the answers to the Key Stage Two grammar, punctuation and spelling test appeared on a password-protected area of an exam board website for several hours before being removed. A “rogue marker” was blamed for the leak.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the data was “not worth the paper it is written on” as it could not be compared with previous years, and ministers have admitted it cannot trigger interventions. 

“We warned the Government that publishing this data in league tables could lead the public and parents to make poor judgments about a school’s performance, but it has still chosen to do so,” he said.

But schools minister Nick Gibb said: “This year’s Sats are the first that test the new primary school curriculum in English and maths that we introduced in 2014. 

“This new curriculum raises expectations and ensures pupils become more accomplished readers and are fluent in the basics of arithmetic, including times-tables, long division and fractions.

“Many schools have responded well to this more rigorous curriculum, supporting their pupils to be leaving primary school better prepared for the demands of secondary school.”

Across the country, 53 per cent of 11-year-olds reached the expected standard in the headline combination of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Schools were considered to have under-performed if fewer than 65 per cent of pupils failed to reach the Government standard, or to make sufficient progress. 

London has the lowest proportion of under-performing schools - just 15 primaries - while 20 boroughs had no schools at all that failed to reach the target. Across the country 665 schools were considered under par. 

As in previous years, girls did better than boys in reading, writing and mathematics combined - a gap of 8 points which was bigger than last year. Girls outperformed boys in all subjects except maths.  

Poorer pupils continued to lag behind their wealthier counterparts, with a 21 point gap in attainment - 60 per cent to 39 per cent - although the Department for Education claimed the gap was narrowing. 

Chinese pupils were the highest achieving ethnic group, with 71 per cent reaching the expected standard in all of the three core subjects. They were followed by those of Indian heritage on 65 per cent and Bangladeshi pupils on 56 per cent.

White British and black African pupils were on 54 per cent, those of Pakistani heritage on 47 per cent and black Caribbean pupils on 43 per cent. Roma children were the lowest performing group with just 13 per cent. 

Older pupils performed better than their summer-born peers in all subject areas with a 14-point difference between September and August born children.