Family & Education
High-flying Charedi girls take the top slots among Jewish schools for GCSE performance
October 20, 2017 12:00
Two Charedi girls schools are among the top 50 state schools in England, according to provisional new figures for GCSE from the Department for Education.
Seven out of the country’s 12 Jewish state schools were rated “well above average” for Progress 8, the score which measures how much progress children have made from entry to GCSE.
Menorah High School for Girls in Hendon scored the seventh highest Progress 8 score for an English state school, with Beis Yaakov in Salford at number 48.
Hasmonean High in north-west London was joint 77 and JFS joint 90. Yesodey Hatorah, a Charedi girls school in Hackney, King David Liverpool and Yavneh College in Hertfordshire also ranked “well above average”, while King David Manchester, Kantor King Solomon in Redbridge and JCoSS in Barnet were all “above average”.
Lubavitch Senior Girls performed averagely. But the strictly Orthodox Mesivta boys’ school in Bury explained its below-average score was “not an accurate representation of the grades achieved by pupils, as they sit their GCSEs a year early. Unfortunately GCSE grades given in 2016 do not count towards the Progress 8 figure.” Eighty-nine per cent of Mesivta boys received a grade C/level 4 or above in English and 83 per cent in maths, the schoo said.
Collectively, Jewish state schools scored 0.62 at Progress 8 — up from 0.45 last year. A score of 0.5 or above means pupils at a school are achieving half a grade higher at GCSE than might have been predicted from their ability at the age of 11.
| School | Progress 8 | Attainment 8 | Engligh/Maths | EBacc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Menorah Girls | 1.26 | 67.4 | 86% | 74% |
| Beis Yaakov | 0.92 | 55.5 | 58% | 29% |
| Hasmonean | 0.85 | 63.2 | 72% | 53% |
| JFS | 0.83 | 63.3 | 76% | 56% |
| Yesodey Hatorah Senior Grils | 0.76 | 56.9 | 68% | 0% |
| King David Liverpool | 0.70 | 59.1 | 78% | 42% |
| Yavneh | 0.59 | 55.6 | 58% | 26% |
| King David Manchester | 0.49 | 61.6 | 75% | 39% |
| Kantor King Solomon HS | 0.36 | 51.2 | 57% | 41% |
| JCoSS | 0.30 | 54.5 | 51% | 24% |
| Lubavitch House School (Senior Girls) | 0.17 | 43.1 | 50% | 50% |
| Manchester Mesivta School | -1.01 | 41.6 | 0% | 0% |
| Average for English state-funded schools | -0.03 | 46.0 | 42.2 | 21.1 |
According to the DfE, faith schools overall achieve “slightly higher” results than the national average. Among religious schools, the “highest performers” are the eight Muslim and 12 Jewish schools.
Jewish schools rank third in the religious sector for Progress 8, behind 0.78 for the three Sikh schools and 1.03 for the Muslim schools — significantly higher scores than the hundreds of Christian, and thousands of secular, schools.
Jewish schools came top with their Attainment 8 score of 58.4, which measures GCSE points per pupil. Although this represented a slight drop from 60.2 last year, tougher new maths and English introduced this year have to be taken into account.
Attainment 8 is based on the pupil’s best eight GCSEs, which must include at least one English and one maths — which count double — and three English Baccalaureate subjects (EBacc) such as science, history or a language.
The table (above) also shows the percentages at Jewish schools achieving the EBacc measure with at least level 5 in English and maths: and the percentages in English and maths GCSE at level 5 or above (although level 4 is currently considered a “pass”).