Students and staff at Harrow College and Uxbridge College are celebrating after jointly hitting the No. 1 spot in London for success for 16-18 year olds.

HCUC (Harrow College Uxbridge College) - the merged ‘college group’ for the two individual organisations - achieved the highest overall achievement rate at 85.6% for 2017/18 in the figures released earlier this month.

Laraine Smith OBE, Principal and CEO of HCUC, said: “We should all feel very pleased about this fantastic headline which is particularly positive given 2017/18 was the first year of HCUC’s existence following the legal merger of Harrow College and Uxbridge College. Whilst the two colleges continue to stand as separate establishments and to each work individually to the highest possible standards, we would also like to acknowledge the fantastic collective effort that has resulted in this very commendable overall outcome. Congratulations to all students and staff involved in making this excellent result possible.”

HCUC’s QAR (Qualification Achievement Rate) in the Department for Education’s National Achievement Rate Tables places it 1.4% above the next best performing college in London, and 3.3% above the next best performing college in west London.

The figures rank London’s 30 colleges and college groups in the tables published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency in April 2019. The data covers achievement rates in classroom-based qualifications including in science, engineering, computing, business and the creative arts.

QAR figures replace the previously used ‘success rates’ and this is the first year results for Harrow College and Uxbridge College have been published under the HCUC umbrella. QAR is a measure of those students who were successful compared to the number who started the course in the first place, so is a more demanding measure than achievement rates such as those published by most schools, which generally show the percentages successful compared with the total number who were entered for the qualification.