Sunday Times Parent Power is the most respected, the most extensive and best researched study of the best schools in both the state and the independent sector in the UK. This year’s survey was published yesterday and it shows the great, and growing, significance of the International Baccalaureate Diploma in the UK.
The clearest sign of that significance is the choice of Sevenoaks School, a 100% IB school for over a decade, as the Sunday Times Independent School of the Year, for the second time in ten years. To win such an award, a school has to ward off some of the greatest names in global education, Westminster and Eton and Winchester and St Paul’s (Boys and Girls). Such an accolade is clearly won by outstanding academic results – Sevenoaks came 8th in the simple exam rankings, but it takes more than that. As Katy Ricks, the head for 16 glorious years, said:
‘You need a free-spirited environment where people can take risks and try things out. We love getting good results bur our aim is education for its own sake. What’s far more important is what underlies our results, and that’s an ethos of learning and excitement around learning. Superb teaching is to do with the thrill of knowledge and wanting others to find that thrilling, too. Students do brilliantly when they are taught in a brilliant way.’
And it is the sense of excitement, of difference, of international-mindedness that has enabled Sevenoaks to stand out in such company.
However, that’s not the end of it. 11 of the top 70 schools in the independent sector offer the IB Diploma, KCS Wimbledon (3rd and a previous winner of School of the Year), Sevenoaks, North London Collegiate (16th), King Edward’s School, Birmingham (18th and the top-performing independent school north of Oxford), Godolphin and Latymer (32nd), The Stephen Perse Foundation (40th), Whitgift (50th), Wellington College (53rd), Cheltenham Ladies’ College (54th), Headington School (64th) and The Abbey School, Reading (65th).
And the Sunday Times IB School of the Year was none of the above, but Windermere School, in the Lake District. The school won the award for its achievement in improving its ranking by over 50 places to 124th and its average Diploma score to 35 points. The school will never compete with the giants of the global capital that is London, but the Head, Ian Lavender, has strong values and a deep commitment to the breadth and educational philosophy of the IB.
‘I’ve taken students who’ve been rejected from other schools, where their GCSEs would not gain them entry to the sixth form. In many ways I think the school has a great advantage of being accessible to students with modest GCSEs and yet stretch those who get all A*s.
‘We all share a joy in seeing students who might not achieve elsewhere achieve things that are beyond what you thought possible.’
However, IB schools in the state sector were equally successful and striking in that success. Tonbridge Grammar School came 9th in the state sector ranking, Dartford Grammar School, last year’s Sunday Times IB school of the year with 650 students doing the Diploma, came 16th, and Hockerill Anglo-European came 32nd. The survey picker out Hockerill for its success: ‘the school – selective for just 10% of its intake – achieves an astonishing performance with a rise of 30 places on last year after nearly two-thirds of all HL IB exams were passed at 7 or 6, the equivalent of A*/A at a Level. And there was a special mention for St Benedict’s Catholic High School in Alcester which came 156th: ‘very few state or independent schools embrace the IB as wholeheartedly as St Benedict’s has, Its attainment, up by 11% on last year, is remarkable given its non-selective intake.
2018 will be the 50th anniversary of the creation of the IB Diploma in England. Fifty years on the IB Diploma, and the much newer IB Career-related Programme, provide a curriculum of global regard which is bringing not only outstanding results but also a true education and preparation for the challenges of the world’s future.