Eton beaten State school’s Oxford success

A state school in London has achieved some of the best A-level results in the country, and will send more students to Oxbridge than Eton College.

Fifty-five pupils from Brampton Manor Academy in Newham got the grades to secure places at Oxford or Cambridge, the school said yesterday.

Dr Dayo Olukosh, its headmaster, said his pupils, the majority of whom are from ethnic minority backgrounds, in receipt of free school meals, or will be the first in their family to attend university, are “just as capable as their privileged peers”.

“There is a strong culture of high expectation that runs through everything we do here, right from the cleaners to myself,” he said.

Eton College, where it costs £42,500 per year to study, had 48 Oxbridge offers made to its Year 13 pupils this year. A source close to Gavin Williamson, praised the east London school’s achievement.

“For Brampton Manor to have sent so many of its students to some of the country’s leading universities is a truly incredible achievement,” they said. Some 350 students took A-levels at the school this year with 330 getting into Russell Group universities, including the 55 who got into Oxbridge.

In 2014, just one Brampton student received an offer for Oxbridge but by last year this had risen to 51.

The selective sixth form, which opened in 2012, receives an estimated 3,000 applications for around 300 places per year.

Pupil Nana Arthur, 18, of Rainham, east London, who is heading to Cambridge University to study philosophy, said: “We are disadvantaged people and this school gave us a way to move up.

“To be honest, as soon as you come into this school you can’t not succeed – it is quite infectious.”