Kingsbridge Community College may have a picturesque setting in South Hams, between Exeter and Plymouth, but the 1,295-pupil school is contending with the same challenges facing many in the state sector: a cut in funding and falling attendance rates since the pandemic. Despite this, its 2023 A-level and GCSE results are a standout success, and it has jumped 55 places to become one of the top 200 state schools in the UK. It is The Sunday Times Parent Power Southwest Secondary School of the Year 2024.
This is a truly comprehensive school with pupils from a diverse range of social and economic backgrounds, many of whom travel by bus for up to two hours a day. Key to the stellar results is the way the school listens to students, says its principal, Tina Graham.
“It’s about really understanding what students need and empowering them to be instruments of change,” she says. “It was sixth-formers who asked for the return of the house system, and sixth-formers are also house captains, they organise fundraising and 35 are trained in mental health support for younger students.”
The school also has a thriving extracurricular programme, with close links to local rugby clubs, and there is always a handful of teams taking part in the Ten Tors challenge on Dartmoor.
“The ambition is to ensure that students leave us with the best academic results they can get,” Graham says. “We are unapologetic in this, but knowing that this is our job and enacting the job are two different things. You only get one chance and we take that chance very seriously. It really is a collective sense of responsibility.”
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A similar harnessing of the student voice and culture of participation led to excellent results at Pate’s Grammar School in Cheltenham, believes the new head, Dr James Richardson. The school has climbed two places to make the national top five, and it is crowned the Southwest Secondary School of the Year for Academic Performance 2024.
“All students take four A-levels as standard but everyone is involved in extracurricular activities from sport to music and the arts, and if there isn’t a club or society they can start one,” Richardson says. “We now have a popular maths club founded by a Year 7 student who has been busy recruiting members for the past 18 months, and in the sixth form there is everything from MedSoc to the Taylor Swift Appreciation Society.”
Other schools in the region that have had notable success this year include the Crypt School, in Gloucester, which is up 64 places and back in the top 150 nationwide; Parkstone Grammar in Poole, which has risen 10 places to 123= and Nailsea School, North Somerset, which has risen 98 places to 300=.
The headmaster of Bristol Grammar School, Jaideep Barot, sees its award of Southwest Independent School of the Year 2024 as the conclusion of a period of sustained reflection, refocusing and evolution. This summer’s results sent the school soaring 40 places to break into the top 100 national independent schools, and it is the only school in the regional top ten to increase its overall percentage of A*-B grades.
“Everything has come together,” Barot says. “There is an air of real positivity about the school.” He credits this improvement partly to its move away from the consideration of “raw grades” to focus instead on data-driven “value-added” success. “It is about being able to celebrate the child for whom, say, ten B grades at GCSE is every bit as impressive an achievement as the child who gets straight A*s,” Barot says. “It is about getting each child to a place they never thought they’d be.”
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Barot, himself an “assisted-place kid”, is keen to keep the charitable foundation alive for the 21st century and has an ambition for one in four pupils to be in receipt of a significant bursary award by 2032, the school’s 500th anniversary. “Yes, it is about social justice and social mobility, but it is also about increasing diversity and making the school a better place for everyone,” he says. “By attracting the brightest and most aspirational minds, regardless of background, it makes our whole community stronger.”
Other schools that deserve an honourable mention include St Mary’s Calne (up 14 places to take joint second spot in the regional academic league table), Redmaids’ High School in Bristol (up 14 places), Clifton College (up 36), Marlborough College (up 26) and Cheltenham College (a 65-place jump). Plymouth College almost sneaks into the top 240 schools, rising 97 places to 253
However, the only southwest school in the UK top 50 is Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which has moved up one place and takes the title of Southwest Independent School of the Year for Academic Performance 2024.
Eve Jardine-Young, the principal of the £29,700-a-year school, attributes its impressive exam performance to the dedication of staff and the open-mindedness and engagement of pupils.
“The challenges that young people face each year will continue and we do not underestimate the effects of this,” Jardine-Young says. “But we believe strongly that the encouragement we provide for young people to be brave, to question, to fail and pick themselves up, to reflect and to explore the world around them is the key to our success.”
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This is the 170th anniversary year of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and it has developed a new strategic vision to secure its future for the next two centuries, built around the pillars of educational excellence; empower and inspire; welfare and wellbeing; diversity, inclusion and community; and financial resilience and innovation.
Jardine-Young is facing the prospect of the imposition of VAT on its fees with the same resilience the school instils in its pupils. “It is unrealistic to think that all of this can be passed on directly to parents in the form of increased fees,” she says. “As a result we are focused on developing strategies to diversify our income streams and reduce our operating costs, while ensuring this does not diminish the exceptional provision and opportunities currently available.”
Best state and grammar schools in the southwest
Regional rank / school / national rank
1. Pate’s Grammar School, Cheltenham (4)
2. Colyton Grammar School, near Axminster (13=)
3. Sir Thomas Rich’s School, Gloucester (63)
4. Bishop Wordsworth’s School, Salisbury (79)
5. Denmark Road High School, Gloucester (99)
6. Torquay Girls’ Grammar School (101)
7. Bournemouth School for Girls (104)
8. Devonport High School for Girls (111)
9. Stroud High School (121=)
10. Parkstone Grammar School, Poole (123=)
Best comprehensive schools in the southwest
1. Kingsbridge Community College (200)
2. Balcarras School, near Cheltenham (218=)
3. The Cotswold School, Bourton-on-the-Water (246)
4. Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School, Wotton-under-Edge (250)
5. Malmesbury School (251=)
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Best private schools in the southwest
1. Cheltenham Ladies’ College (36)
2=. St Mary’s Calne (57=)
2=. King Edward’s School, Bath (57=)
4. Redmaids’ High School, Bristol (66)
5. Marlborough College (75)
6. Canford School, Wimborne (81)
7. Exeter School (94)
8. Bristol Grammar School (96)
9. Kingswood School, Bath (112)
10. The Maynard School, Exeter (137)
If a school does not appear in the Parent Power league table it is most likely because it did not respond to our requests for its A-level and GCSE results and the results could not be found in the public domain.
School league tables 2024
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