The definitive guide to Britain's top 2,000 independent and state schools

Are there any state schools as good as some of Britain’s most expensive private schools – schools where parents, without forking out a bean, are well-nigh guaranteed that their child will secure a string of top exam grades and scoop a place at an excellent university?

Indeed there are, according to the 2007 Sunday Times Parent Power table of the top 100 schools in the country. Two single-sex grammar schools in Barnet, north London, Henrietta Barnett and Queen Elizabeth’s, together with Colyton grammar in Devon, make it into the top 30 in our table, academically outstripping private schools as famous as Harrow, Oundle and Badminton, where boarding fees are about £24,000 a year.

Nine state schools, all grammars – which select the brightest pupils at the age of 11 – are ranked in the country’s top 50, while 18 enter the top 100. No comprehensives make the table, which ranks state and independent schools on the proportion of top grades achieved at A-level and GCSE in this summer’s examinations. The highest ranked comprehensive, Watford Grammar School for Girls, comes in at 28th in the state secondary school table.

The rankings are led by the fee-paying St Paul’s girls’ school in west London, where more than 90% of A-levels were graded A last year and alumni include TV newsreader Sophie Raworth and actress Emily Mortimer. Last year North London Collegiate, another fee-paying girls’ school in the capital, knocked St Paul’s off the top spot, but it has climbed back. High mistress Clarissa Farr says one factor in St Paul’s success was that it was single sex. “Achievement in maths, for instance, is exceptional, because there is no sense here in which this is a male-dominated subject,” she says.

Parents lucky enough to have a child at one of the 18 state super-schools in our table include the wealthy and famous. Comedian Victoria Wood as well as broadcaster Jon Snow chose Henrietta Barnett (21st in our table) for their daughters, rather than a London fee-paying school.

Dr John Marincowitz, head teacher of Queen Elizabeth’s, which scoops the title of Sunday Times State Secondary School of the Year, reveals that some Labour MPs are among the parents who opted for his boys’ grammar. “There are increasing numbers of parents who turn down even scholarships at private schools so that their children can come here,” says Marincowitz. Queen Elizabeth’s is ranked 23rd in our table.

The academic success of grammars as shown by the 2007 Parent Power rankings will fuel calls for more to be opened, despite the fact that both Labour and the Conservatives are reluctant. Both parties have pledged only not to close any of the existing 164 grammar schools.

But if our Parent Power data shows just how close the top grammars are getting to the leading private schools on exam performance alone, there is one measure on which they still appear to be trailing. Despite their remarkable A-level results, grammar school pupils seem to fare less well when it comes to landing a place at the top universities. An analysis by the Sutton Trust last month showed the proportion of university entrants going to Oxbridge from the top 30 independent schools was nearly twice that of the top 30 grammars.

For the first time this year we have broken down the proportion of pupils getting A grades at A-level at each state school. At Queen Elizabeth’s four in five A-level entries (79.2%) were graded A this summer; there are just 14 fee-paying schools that do better on this measure. Yet, according to the Sutton Trust’s analysis, more than 40 private schools had a higher admission rate than Queen Elizabeth’s to Oxbridge over a five-year period.

Oliver Blond, head teacher at Henrietta Barnett, where 15 girls applied to Oxford for entry in 2006 and only two were made offers, (his school had a higher success rate at Cambridge) said he felt the school could be doing more to prepare pupils. Blond says: “Oxford and Cambridge seem to take pupils who are intellectually curious, well read and have a passion for their subject. Independent schools have more opportunity to deliver these characteristics. Schools such as ours could emphasise the kind of learning that develops these characteristics.”

Another answer for bright pupils worried they could be overlooked by Oxbridge may be to persuade their schools to switch from the increasingly discredited A-level – last year more than one in four of all grades awarded were As – to an alternative qualification, the International Baccalaureate, which allows for finer distinctions between highflying pupils.

This is what Sevenoaks, our Sunday Times Independent Secondary School of the Year has done. The switch from A-level to IB began a decade ago and was completed last summer when children sat only IB exams for the first time. Seven of the 72 students worldwide who achieved the top IB score of 45 points this year – out of more than 35,000 entrants – studied at Sevenoaks, in Kent. The top score is equivalent to more than six As at A-level, so perhaps it is not surprising that 37 of the school’s 202 IB pupils won places at Oxbridge.

Head teacher Katy Ricks says: “We had one pupil from Ghana who got the top score of 45 points and was offered a place by both Oxford and Yale universities – she went to Yale. Top universities love the IB. I was at the Ivy league Stanford University in America recently and they said, ‘We clap our hands when we see IB on a student entry’. I think it is a benefit to getting into a top university.”

Sevenoaks is the only coeducational school to make it into our top 10 – “girl power” looms large again this year. Girls’ secondary schools occupy the first four places in this year’s secondary school table as they did last year and the year before.

At prep level, too, seven of the top schools are girls’ only, two are mixed and just one is all boys – Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’.

Our Independent Preparatory School of the Year is the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, a former boys’ school that last year admitted girls for the first time and has made steady progress into the upper reaches of the tables thanks to its performance in national tests at age 11.

In the state sector, selection by religious faith rather than gender is a marker of some of the best schools. Thirteen of the top 20 state primaries are faith schools – mostly Church of England and Catholic. The Sunday Times State Primary School of the Year is North Cheshire Jewish Primary in Cheadle, which devotes a fifth of lessons to Jewish studies.

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