Using Ofsted ratings and KS2 attainment data across all 33 London boroughs, we rank which areas consistently produce the best school outcomes.
Which London boroughs consistently produce the best school outcomes? Using Ofsted inspection data and KS2 attainment scores across all 33 London boroughs, here is what the data shows.
The proportion of schools rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted varies significantly across London — from over 89% in the highest-performing boroughs to under 50% in those with the most ground to make up.
The consistently strong performers: Enfield, Waltham Forest, Lewisham, Islington, Newham, Barking and Dagenham, and Havering all have more than 84% of schools rated Good or Outstanding. Several of these — Newham, Barking, Waltham Forest — are high-deprivation boroughs, which makes their school performance particularly impressive.
The more challenging boroughs: Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, despite their affluence, have relatively lower proportions of Good or Outstanding schools. This is partly because both boroughs contain a large number of independent schools (which are inspected separately by ISI rather than Ofsted) and specialist schools with unusual profiles.
Camden and City of London also show lower proportions — City of London in particular has only a handful of schools and its results are statistically unreliable.
Ofsted ratings and KS2 attainment tell different stories. The boroughs with the highest average KS2 scores tend to be outer London boroughs with lower FSM percentages — Richmond upon Thames, Bromley, Sutton.
But as discussed in our piece on attainment vs progress, these high scores partly reflect the demographic advantage of their pupil populations rather than exceptional teaching quality. When adjusted for deprivation, inner London boroughs often show comparable or better progress.
Borough-level data is a useful starting point but should not be the primary factor in school choice. The variation within any London borough is typically larger than the variation between boroughs.
There are Outstanding schools in every London borough — and schools that are Requires Improvement in every borough. A family moving to London purely on the basis of borough-level school data and ignoring the specific schools available to them is making a mistake.
That said, for families with genuine flexibility about where to live, boroughs like Enfield, Waltham Forest and Lewisham offer consistently strong state school quality alongside significantly lower house prices than equivalent areas in West and South West London.
One striking feature of the London school data is the weak relationship between house prices and school quality. The correlation between median house price in a borough and percentage of Good or Outstanding schools is much weaker than many parents assume.
Enfield (89.9% Good or Outstanding, median house price £395k) outperforms Richmond upon Thames (70.6% Good or Outstanding, median house price £680k) by a significant margin.
This doesn't mean school quality causes lower house prices — the relationship is complex and local factors dominate. But it does suggest that parents spending a premium to live in a "good school" area are sometimes paying for the postcode rather than the school quality.
Use the borough comparison tool on ofsted.london to compare any combination of boroughs across school quality, house prices, crime rates and rental costs.
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