The UK independent schools are highly respected in the world, and attract more than 26,000 international pupils from around the world every year. These public schools adopt academically challenging curriculum, enriched by outstanding range of activities, aiming at high academic quality, prestigious status as well as shaping characters of students’ individuality. A study by Sutton Trust shows 80% of those who hold key positions in British society received privileged private education in the UK, despite only about 7% of the UK children being educated at private schools. The ten UK private schools which produced 12% of the UK professional elite were Eton, Winchester, Charterhouse, Rugby, Westminster, Marlborough, Dulwich, Harrow, St Paul’s Boys’ School and Wellington College.
Though A-level results offer an indicative guide to schools performance, many top independent schools do not participate in annual A-level school league tables, because they think the league table culture encourages the tendency to focus on statistics rather than education. St Paul’s Boys’ School, for example, believe that raw statistics are not an accurate guide to the quality of education available in a school. Therefore, they did not release their results for the compilation of league tables since 2008, though they were good. On average, 53.8% of their students achieved A* in the past three years A-level exams, and 88.9% scored A*/A for the past five years.
The following table, based on The Telegraph independent school league tables 2013, lists the top 300 UK independent schools A-level results graded at A*/A or equivalent, using data provided by the Independent Schools Council. The measure reflects achievement in maths, English literature, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history and modern and classical languages.
[table “7” not found /]According to The Daily Telegraph, there are around 50 schools boycott the above league tables, meaning that not every school is listed.