I write today to share the excellent news that Queen Elizabeth’s has been named The Sunday Times Parent Power State Secondary School of the Year.

This award is separate to the Parent Power academic rankings published annually: while academic performance is undoubtedly a very important factor, this award recognises our overall achievements across all aspects of School life.

Becoming State Secondary School of the Year is thus a significant accolade. It is as Alastair McCall, editor of Parent Power, puts it, recognition of the School’s “sustained excellence”.

With public examinations cancelled over the past two summers, this year’s wider Parent Power rankings were based on the aggregated A-level and GCSE performance across the last three pre-pandemic years, 2017–2019. As it has done in seven of the last nine years, QE topped the table. (I would add that while our 2020 and 2021 results were achieved under very different conditions, we have strong internal evidence that the boys have been maintaining our very high standards and have progressed very well, despite the pandemic.)

I was further pleased to see Mr McCall recognise that QE is “no academic hothouse”, with our success in examinations achieved “as a by-product of a wider school ethos centred on fully developing the boys’ considerable talents.” He added: “Boys leave the school confident young men capable of taking their place in the world, nurtured by a school with outstanding facilities and exceptional teaching.” Quite so!

The award thus reflects the breadth of the educational experience here at QE, with pupils taking full advantage of the opportunities available to enrich themselves, pursuing their intellectual interests well beyond the confines of course syllabuses and throwing themselves into our huge range of clubs and societies – more than 90 at last count – many of them set up by the boys themselves.

Our consistency of achievement at the highest level, spanning so many years, is truly remarkable and testament to the talent, ambition and dedication of our pupils, their families, our staff and all those involved in guiding and supporting the School. In short, it is a team effort, and I therefore hope everyone in the Elizabethan community will take both personal and collective pride in this award. We have, in fact, won the award twice before, in 2001 and 2007. With The Sunday Times Schools Guide and the Parent Power rankings remaining highly respected and influential within the education sector, we believe this triple success to be a rare achievement indeed.

This 2022 State Secondary School of the Year award will take us up to the start of our 450th anniversary year in 2023 and demonstrates that our shared vision, set out in our current School Plan, of ‘building on distinction’ is highly appropriate.

With the challenges that all schools have faced over the past 20 months, the award comes as a welcome boost, and one that I think is well-deserved for the tireless and tenacious work put in by boys and staff.

The Parent Power awards and rankings have been published online for subscribers this morning and will appear in a special supplement in this weekend’s Sunday Times.

With very best wishes,

Mr Neil Enright
Headmaster