Why London is the best place to educate your kids
If you've considered moving out of London to give your kids a better upbringing, you might want to think again. It seems staying in the capital is better when it comes to one essential factor – schooling.
London has the best performance at secondary school level of anywhere in the country and more than half of the top 20 best local authorities are located in the capital, according to a new report.
Of GCSE pupils, 44 per cent attain a world class benchmark level in the capital, compared to just 38 on average across the country, while not a single London location appeared in the list of top 20 worst performing local authorities.
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Kingston, Sutton, Trafford, Buckinghamshire and Slough have a relatively high proportion of selective schools, the Centre Forum think tank research notes, "which may well be skewing the data as selective schools often attract pupils with high prior attainment and abilities from neighbouring authorities". It adds, however, that "it would be equally distorting to remove selective schools entirely from these tables".
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Pupils in London also make substantially more progress between primary and secondary compared to other regions, the report found.
Of the best 20 boroughs when it comes to progress between primary and secondary school, all were located in London bar Wokingham.
The research measured attainment at secondary school based on a benchmark of the percentage of pupils achieving 50 points or higher across certain areas such as English and maths.