Newham council have praised the boroughs secondary schools and their pupils on their excellent GCSE examinations successes.

Cabinet member for children and young people, Councillor Quintin Peppiatt said: “I am really pleased that we have again seen some excellent individual performances from students in GCSE examinations and those young people should be very proud of themselves.”

Newham council already celebrating a rise in A Level results received the GCSE reports for schools across the borough today, finding a similar rise in average grades for many of their secondary schools.

Rokerby in Canning Town was the most improved school out of those who have already confirmed results, the percentage of pupils receiving five or more A* – C grades including Mathematics and English rose from 38% to 52% this year.

Councillor Peppiatt explained “We are still waiting for detailed results from a number of our secondary schools but we anticipate that the picture in Newham will be similar to the rest of London where there has been a variation in results and some schools have seen falls and others have seen increases. We will be analysing in great depth the data we get from all our schools to get a clearer idea of how they have performed compared to others.”

There have been massive changes to the way GCSE’s were taken this year after the government brought in large adjustments to the examinations and the teaching staff, governors and of course the pupils have taken up the challenge amazingly.

Other schools who performed better than last year are Forest Gate Community School (up five percentage points to 57%); Sarah Bonnell School in Stratford (up four to 66%); Little Ilford School in Manor Park (up two to 63%); and Lister (up one to 56%). Plashet School in East Ham achieved the best grades matching their brilliant success of last year exactly at 69% again.

Councillor Peppiatt added: “We applaud those schools which have reported improved performance and we will be looking to them to share their knowledge and experience with others. Where schools have not performed as expected we will be working with them on actions to secure improvement next time to ensure no Newham child is left behind.”

During the 2012 Olympic preparations the London Mayors ‘local jobs for local residents’ initiative ran into problems as it transpired that those residents did not have the necessary employment standard of 5 GCSE’s A* – C including Maths and English.

With grades at all levels of secondary school examination on the rise the borough is silencing their critics and putting an end to the association of failing schools and a lack of education in Newham.