Slough - The most successful schools in the UK - In the 5th biggest economy in the world!

Here I am making another outrageous claim. Another statement that will have you choking and spluttering on your Costa or your Bran Flakes. The Real Schools Guide 2019 has declared that Slough has two schools in the top 20 of the UK and its top ten schools are in the top 300. Langley Grammar School has been declared the best in Royal Berkshire and Upton Grammar school second. Slough has 5 schools in Berkshires top ten schools.

Think about that not in Windsor where the Queen resides along with Eton College which is in fact the poshest secondary school in the world. But in Slough. Well done Langley Grammar and all Slough schools. Langley Grammar school is the 11th best in the UK.

The Real Schools Guide 2019 has declared that Slough has two schools in the top 20 of the UK and its top ten schools are in the top 300. Langley Grammar School has been declared the best in Royal Berkshire.

Well don't blame me. I am just the messenger. I am happy for the "experts" to denounce this as fantasy as fake news as hyperbole. Actually, maybe I am not so happy. Lets deal in facts, impartial, independent cold hard facts. You won't find such promotion of Slough's success in the national sponsored best schools articles in The Tatler or The Telegraph because it doesn't fit with a particular narrative for a specific audience, Its too painful to bear it is for some unthinkable.

2o years ago Slough had one of the UK's worst schools performances with one school making national news headlines as the worst school in the UK

But those of you who studied in Slough who might be working in the upper echelons of society, as a CEO of this company or that organisation, as a thought leader, as a doctor, as a technologist, as a whatever the world is supposed to be best at you will recognise the essence of what I am saying and you will know it to be true.

That is true of people educated in Slough 20 years ago. But world watch out, 20 years ago Slough's skills profile was among the worst in the UK then. With one of Slough's schools making the front page of the best selling popular rag of the day The Sun. To be shamed publicly in such a way in that publications of all publications was truly humiliating. Yet that might well have been the trigger for Slough to transform. Today I am arguing it is the best in the UK despite some of the so called challenges of diversity of class of ethnic background of language.

In Slough schools there are 154 different languages spoken with 52 languages where English is not the first spoken language in that household

Yet this success hasn't happened by accident. It is as a real combination of circumstances, opportunity, political will and commitment, business demand and need and most importantly the hunger of the students and their parents to make the sacrifices necessary. Finally,it is the commitment of hard working inspirational teachers to come to Slough and teach. To come here when it was easier to go to a leafier part of the world with well mannered less complicated lifestyles.

But as I have said before about Slough there is a ying and a yang element to success. You need dire and desperate circumstances to drive you, you need professionals who enjoy the thrill of a challenge and above all you need the opportunities and the pull factors that create this magic that no academic, civil servant or technology boffin will ever be able put into the algorithms to arrive at the exciting, pulsating, thrusting place that is Slough

A bit more about the schools, we have rather unusually, despite our social demographics and politics four grammar schools, Langley, Upton(formerly Slough), Herschel and St,Bernards (Catholic) but we also have a sprinkling of C of E secondaries including Slough and Eton, Baylis Court an all girls secondary school, Eden, a Muslim girls secondary school, a Sikh secondary school, a special needs Arbor Vale and even a private school Long Close. It is the epitomy of choice in schools designed for all abilities whilst still not being the utopia we all seek and desire. All said and done it is truly remarkable

The challenges that have faced the Slough communities are real they are still there for many families. Families arrive here, do well and some move on. But of one thing there is no doubt there is something special that has happened in Slough that doesnt't fit with concepts and correlations of social class, of ethnicity, of language of inequalities, poverty to success that surely is worthy of a a few Phd studies or two. Over to you!

Of course it is a mere coincidence that the UK's premier research institution for educational research The National Foundation for Educational Research happens to be in Slough. Maybe all there knowledge and expertise just seeped into the water and into the atmosphere.

In March this year Eden girls school a Muslim girls school won the Mosaic Enterprise Challenge for the South East of England to represent schools at the national Mosaic Enterprise Challenge sponsored by Prince Charles and businesses across the country. If that isn't mainstream and ground breaking I don't know what is.

As we approach results day full of excitement, exhilaration and disappointments Slough again stands out as a beacon of what is possible. Congratulations Slough and all its stakeholders Slough has the youngest population in the UK but it is clear it is also producing some of the brightest too!