Religious primary schools achieve better test results than other state and private schools, according to the latest rankings by The Sunday Times.
The success of faith schools, revealed in today’s Parent Power tables, means they account for almost half of the top 500 state primaries, with 48 in the top 100, made up of 25 Catholic, 19 Church of England, two Jewish, one Muslim and one Hindu school. Overall, faith schools account for 37% of all primaries.
The news comes as ministers press ahead with plans to create a wave of new Catholic-only schools next year despite protests from critics.
Among the four faith schools in the state primary top 10 is St Bede’s Roman Catholic primary in Marske-by-the-Sea, near Redcar, one of the poorest parts of the UK. Named today as The Sunday Times State Primary School of the Year, it is part of the Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust, which comprises 25 Catholic schools and a sixth-form college. They take inspiration from the missionary work of an English priest executed in 1679 as part of the anti-Catholic persecution sweeping England, and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.
The head teacher, Joanna Wilson, said: “Everything we do in school is rooted around the gospel values. We talk to the children all the time about how they are behaving and how they treat each other.”
Christ Church primary school in Chelsea, west London, heads the Parent Power table, based on the performance of 11-year-olds in the new, harder, national Sats in maths, English, spelling, punctuation and grammar brought in by Michael Gove when he was education secretary.
The Church of England school has beaten every fee-paying prep school in the Parent Power league tables bar one: Seaton House School in Sutton, south London, named as Prep School of the Year.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said the data showed that “England’s primary schools are getting better across the board” and that Gove had been right to make the tests more difficult.
Sats were revamped in 2016, amid fears that pupils had been slipping behind their international counterparts in reading, writing and maths. Last year, a score of 329 for reading, grammar and maths would have ranked a school as high as 81st place in the Sunday Times Top 500 Primary Schools. This year, some schools which achieved that score do not even reach the top 500.
Smithers said faith schools were soaring away partly because they shared a set of religious values, based around the moral idea of a work ethic — of working hard to achieve the best that you can.
“Faith schools are our best schools as these tables show and it would make no sense to dismantle some of our best schools without knowing that what was going to replace them would be better,” he said.
“Parent Power 2018-19 shows schools are rising to the challenge set by Michael Gove when he was secretary of state for education, of becoming among the best in the world for teaching reading, writing and maths,” Smithers said.
He added: “It is not only the top schools that have been improving. The national figures show that, whereas only just over half of pupils reached the expected level last year, this year it is more than three-fifths.
“There was an outcry from parents and the education profession when the bar was raised in 2016 that too much was being expected of the children and schools. The critics seemed to have a point when the pass-rate percentage fell dramatically. But the evidence shows that schools — and especially some faith schools — are responding brilliantly to the greater demands placed upon them.”
London has done particularly well, with 168 of the top 500 primaries located in the capital.
High attainment is not just confined to the leafy suburbs, however. Inner-city schools and those in deprived areas are doing as well as some of those in smart parts of town.
While Barnet has the most primaries in London within the top 500 (15), Newham — with 10 schools in the Top 500 — is beaten by just four other London boroughs and has two schools in the top 10. One of those schools is last year’s State Primary School of the Year, St Stephen’s, in Newham, which ranks eighth this year.
Critics say it is unfair that admission to faith schools often depends on family attendance at a named church on Sundays. Many sharp-elbowed parents pretend to be devout for a few years — and then never go back to church once their child has been given a place at the school.
Schools Guide 2019
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thesundaytimes.co.uk/parentpower
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...ools-challenge-top-fee-paying-preps-9vdj725tn
