For a second year running, a Charedi girls’ school in North-West London is in the top state schools in England for academic progress up to GCSE, according to provisional figures released by the Department for Education on Thursday.
Menorah High in Cricklewood was ranked sixth in the entire country with a progress score of 1.57 — meaning that girls achieved a grade and a half higher in their GCSEs in the summer than might have been expected from their level when they started the school.
Hasmonean Girls was ranked 26th and JFS joint 32nd nationally. Both Yavneh College and JCoSS made the top 100 while two other Charedi girls schools the top 150 — Yesodey Hatorah in Stamford Hill and Beis Yaakov at Salford.
Astonishingly, 10 out of 14 Jewish secondary schools performed well above the average, according to DFE classifications.
David Landau, Menorah High’s chair of governors, said, “We are very proud of our pupils and of the incredible staff who year on year achieve such impressive results. Our school continuously strives for true success in Torah and derech eretz [behaving ethically in the world].”
![[Missing Credit]](https://api.thejc.atexcloud.io/image-service/view/acePublic/alias/contentid/1frqgbkv2arcyz5crzz/1/gcse-provisional-table-2024-jpg.webp?w=585&q=0.9)
The biggest turnaround was at Beis Yaakov, which was rated inadequate two years ago but received a more positive inspection earlier this year.
The final figures will not be published until next year — although they can be confusing. It is not clear why Leeds Jewish Free School is only rated average for a progress score of 0.45, just below two schools rated well above average by the department.
Figures for the private Immanuel College are not available as it does some IGCSEs (international GCSEs) which are not counted in official tables.
At Mesivta, a strictly Orthodox boys’ school in Salford, pupils usually take their exams a year early in year 10.
Jewish schools generally performed well above the national average for England: the average Progress 8 score in England was 49.5 points, the percentage achieving English and maths passes at grade 5, 49.5 per cent and the percentage attaining English Baccalaureate levels at grade 5, 18 per cent.
