Schools of Choice delivers soaring popularity
Monday January 16, 2012
A radical transformation of secondary schools in Hammersmith & Fulham has resulted in an explosion in popularity.
With standards soaring and choice widening, the number of applications to local state secondary schools for September 2012 is up 50% since 2009.
“We have made it our mission to halt the exodus from the local state school sector when children turn eleven,” says cabinet member for children’s services, Cllr Helen Binmore. “In 2006 only 45 per cent of local children chose to attend local state schools. That has now risen to 61 per cent.
“That’s a result of our ‘Schools of Choice’ programme that has created more places in the kind of schools parents want for their children and supported schools in dramatically driving up standards.”
Two new secondary schools opened in the borough in 2010. The West London Free School is already the most popular school in the borough with 1,072 applications this year and Hammersmith Academy is third with 786 applications.
Two academies and the free school are now three of the top four most-popular schools. Sandwiched between them is London Oratory with 840 applications.
This year’s GCSE results were the best ever in the borough. Seventy two per cent of students gained five or more A*-C grades, including English and maths - an increase of 16% since 2008.
GCSE performance (where students gained five or more A*-C grades, including English and maths) at the borough’s state schools has improved hugely since 2007. At Burlington Danes Academy results increased from 36% in 2007 to 75% in 2011; Fulham Cross went up from 45% to 72% and Hurlingham and Chelsea rose from 42% to 60%. Under its new leadership, Henry Compton has been the most improved school over the past year.
H&F has been named the best authority in the UK for the number of state school sixth-formers going to a top university, despite the fact that 36% of pupils in the borough receive free school meals compared to 17% nationally.
State pupils in H&F are 50 times more likely to be accepted at Oxford or Cambridge than pupils in Hackney, Rochdale, Knowsley or Sandwell. Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green was named in the recent Sutton Trust report as having more pupils going to Oxbridge than any other state school in the UK.
