Southwark secondary schools are now all academies and not directly reporting to Southwark Council but well done on the recently announced GCSE results.

Overall they’ve achieved 57.3% of pupils obtaining 5+ A*-C GCSE’s with English and Maths. Another solid year of improvement. This places Southwark 23rd out of London’s 32 boroughs. This is still some way behind the best London borough Sutton with 74.4% but not so far behind the mean average for London of 61.0%.

What’s especially clever about these results is it comes at a time when 69.9% of Southwark secondary school kids come from ethnic minorities. Many minorities tend historically to get worse results so its an even bigger challenge to break these trends.

How does this compare with neighbouring boroughs – Lambeth achieved 60.1% and Lewisham 55.0%.

Talking to local secondary head they’re clear they can do even better and with primary school results having improved so much over the last 8 years this bods well for the future.

But what happens to all those kids failed by Southwark Council and its schools in the past. I think they need to be given a second chance via free adult education.

What do you think?