Local Good News Story

We are always looking for good news stories from our area and this certainly falls into that category. Many congratulations Thornden School from us all here at Sparks Ellison. We will let the article that appeared in The Telegraph and Daily Echo speak for itself……

A Chandler’s Ford school has been named the best in Hampshire and branded “very good” by a national newspaper.

The Telegraph has branded Thornden School as the county’s top secondary school, giving the score a near perfect 37 out of 40 and praising its percentage of pupils getting fives or higher in their English Baccalaureate.

The national average was 18 per cent, with the local average at 14.5 per cent, but Thornden’s pupils achieved a percentage of 46.2.

Headteacher Caroline Lowing said the school was “really pleased” with the rating, with the Chandler’s Ford institution to be featured in the Good Schools Guide too. She said: “The students here are so aspirational, it’s cool to want to do well. We’re fully staffed with experts as teachers, we don’t have vacancies, and we don’t have people in the wrong departments. “We’ve got experts teaching with so much experience in getting top results.”

In an article ranking the UK’s top 100 secondary schools, The Telegraph rated every school out of 40, using ten criteria which includes scores in the English Baccalaureate GCSE subjects of English, maths, science, a language and either history or geography.

The point system also considers how many qualifications children get, whether they improve between key stage two and GCSEs, the proportion of disadvantaged pupils who achieved high grades and the proportion of pupils who stay in education or employment for at least two terms after their GCSEs.