Queen Elizabeth’s School has been listed as the country’s top boys’ grammar in a new Daily Telegraph league table based on GCSE results and the progress made by pupils since primary school.
The listing of academically selective schools – in which QE was placed third overall – is based on educational data and examination results from 2017.
In her report on the table’s top ten schools, journalist Sophie Inge wrote of QE that it is “consistently placed at or near the very top of the national league tables”, adding that “far from being an ‘exam factory’, it encourages pupils to follow their passions”. She also noted that all sixth-formers are required to carry out voluntary service.
Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I am very pleased to see the achievements of our boys and their teachers recognised in this table.
“It is sometimes claimed that grammar schools’ apparent academic successes are illusory because they achieve them by merely ‘creaming off’ the brightest children and then relying on their innate ability. For QE, this table gives the lie to that accusation, demonstrating that our boys are successfully stretched and challenged to fulfil their potential.”
The grammar school table combined two measures of pupil performance.
Firstly, it took into account the percentage achieving five or more GCSEs graded A*–C (or 9–4, under the new marking system). All of the top ten schools achieved 100% by this measure.
Secondly, the newspaper looked at the Department for Education’s Progress 8 measure, which records the progress made by children between the end of primary school and their GCSE results. Recently updated to take account of the new-style GCSEs, Progress 8 is often described as a measure of the ‘value added’ by schools.
QE achieved a Progress 8 score of 1.16, placing it narrowly behind The Tiffin Girls’ School in Kingston upon Thames and Upton Court Grammar School, a co-educational school in Slough, and ahead of Nonsuch High School for Girls in Sutton. There were no other north London schools besides QE in the top ten.