Children in Bromley get off to a flying start at school with very good early years education, it was revealed at a meeting of the Education, Children and Families Select Committee on 12 December 2018. A very high proportion of Bromley residents take up their children’s entitlement to free early years education, higher than the rest of London, and most children attending these settings achieve a good level of development, way above the national as well as the London averages.
More than ninety per cent of Bromley schools are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, three percentage points above the national average. In fact, all schools inspected in 2017/18 were rated good or outstanding,
Children make good progress in Bromley schools. By the age of 7, children’s achievement places Bromley in the top 10 Local Authorities (LAs) in the country. And this remains the case for 11 year olds. Bromley primary schools have a strong focus on developing children’s writing and, this year, the attainment of 11 year olds in the writing assessments was the best in the country.
Students continue to make very good progress in secondary schools and at GCSE perform well above the national average with 70 per cent achieving a grade 4 in both English and Maths. Looking at the wider range of subjects grouped together as the EBacc subjects (English, mathematics, science, history or geography, a foreign language plus another subject) Bromley substantially exceeds the national average with 54 per cent of Bromley students achieving well across all these subjects compared with 39 per cent nationally. Children with Special Educational Needs in the borough’s secondary schools also make good progress from their individual starting points.
Life-long learning also flourishes in Bromley with an increasing number of learners registering on Adult Education courses and achievement up in all areas
Cllr Nicky Dykes Executive Assistant for Children, Education and Families attended the meeting and commented on the results. She said: “I am incredibly proud of the passionate and dedicated staff and students in Bromley Schools. These results are a credit to the hard work that I know they do. As a Council we have made it our ambition to put Bromley’s children at the centre of all that we do and in the support that we offer schools. I am always delighted to see our young people not only doing well, but also exceeding national averages.
“In Bromley we will always strive for the very best for all children and so will continue to push ourselves and schools to improve further. We will not sit back and rest on our laurels. As we go forward into next year, we will be looking at how we can further support our disadvantaged pupils, make further improvements to our SEN services and support the very small number of schools that still require some improvement. Finally we will be working with schools to ensure the great results in reading, writing and maths continue in both primary and secondary schools.”