Three east London schools are in the top five in the country in a national survey of exam results with Mayflower Primary in Poplar at the very top for the second year running.
St Anrthony’s RC Primary in Forest Gate is second on the “top schools” list for the second year running, while St Stephen’s in East Ham is fifth, from last year’s fourth place.
The survey is based on the 2,000 highest-achieving schools in the UK, ranked by their most recently-published results.
But Mayflower in Upper North Street which the Queen visited in 2017 has matched Britain’s top private prep school as number one in the Sunday Times survey as “state school of the year”.
It’s not big on homework and doesn’t stream pupils by ability, with half the 386 children from deprived overcrowded homes and four-out-of-10 qualifying for pupil premium funding.
Yet despite this, their standard assessment test results are the envy of prep schools and all other state schools.
Year 6 pupils achieved 114 points last year for reading and maths and 118 for grammar, punctuation and spelling, well above the 100 mark expected by the age of 11.
Mayflower’s tally was the highest of the 15,000 primary schools in the survey and equals the top prep school, Guildford High Junior in Surrey.
The school was visited by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in June, 2017, to mark the centenary of a German air raid on the docks when it got a direct hit which killed 18 infants.
A century on and the children of 2017 did a special historic project to mark the centenary.
Year 3 pupil Ayaan Ahmed from Limehouse was chosen to read his work out to the Queen.
Headteacher Dee Bleach invited the Queen and Prince Phillip to unveil a commemorative plaque.
“The centenary has brought our community together,” she told the royal couple. “This plaque will serve as a symbol of remembrance to those lives lost 100 years ago.”
The Queen signed the visitors’ book which today has its pride of place in the school—now added to by topping the national survey two years running.
The royal visit followed a remembrance service that day at nearby All Saints, conducted by the Bishop of Stepney, at the same parish church where the original funeral service for 15 of the children was held in 1917.
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