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On 12 January 2011, the 2010 Secondary School League Tables for England were published. In terms of GCSE rankings, St Bernard's was the 157th highest ranked school and St Joseph's was the 150th lowest.  You can download a comprehensive spreadsheet of the results based on the BBC's figures HERE.

St Joseph's score of 31% (3% lower than last year) puts it in the "failing schools" category.  The threshold used to be 30% but the new government raised it to 35%.  In theory, therefore, it risks being taken over by another school or turned into an Academy.  However, its "English Baccalaureate" score was better than all but one of the non-grammar schools in Slough.

St Bernard's achieved a score of 99% in its GCSE results, in common with 3 of the 4 Slough grammar schools.  In 2010 it was Langley Grammar's turn to score 100%, just as St Bernard's did in 2009.

Of more significance, however, is that St Bernard's was by some margin the best school in Slough for A and AS levels.  It scored 1,035 points with Langley grammar in 2nd place scoring only 888.

In terms of the new "English Baccalaureate", St Bernard's and Slough Grammar topped the league of Slough schools with a score of 73%.   This made St Bernard's the 140th highest ranking school in England with Slough Grammar in 138th place.   The baccalaureate is the percentage of children scoring A* - C grades in English, Maths, two sciences, a foreign language and History or Geography.

The baccalaureate highlights some interesting differences between schools with Langley Grammar scoring 60% and Herschel Grammar only 29%.

St Joseph's scored 8% for the baccalaureate which was the 2nd highest score of the non-grammar schools in Slough.  It seems to show that unlike most of the other non-grammar schools in Slough, St Joseph's is prepared to promote the more traditionally academic GCSE subjects, even if this impacts negatively on its headline GCSE results.

The full results for Slough can be found on the BBC web site.

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After months of uncertainty, today's Monday Letter from St Bernard's contained some great news:

"The Northamptonshire Diocese has informed the school that they have now officially withdrawn the Expression of Interest from the Department for Education regarding the potential merger of St Bernard's and St Joseph's.  This means that Governors can now plan for the future of the school and in due course they will be contacting parents with regards to fund raising and improving the provision for students."

Back in September, Parul Agarwal from DfE replied to my enquiry: The Sponsors have indicated to the Department that they will wish to pursue the idea of an academy in Slough should the capital investment funding become available.

Presumably, therefore, capital investment funding was not available after October's Comprehensive Spending Review.

While this is great news, St Bernard's is still short of funding and the fundamental problem remains whereby Northampton Diocese subsidises the education of the vast majority of students who live outside the Diocese.

On behalf of FaCT, can I urge any parents who are not contributing a decent amount each year to the School Fund to start doing so now.

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