| South East England is one of the nine official regions of England. It was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics in 1999. Its boundaries include Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex. In common usage, however, the area referred to as the 'south east' can vary considerably.
Its population as of the 2001 census was 8,000,550, making it the most populous English region. The highest point is Walbury Hill in Berkshire at 297m/974 ft. The major conurbations of the region include Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton (population in 2001 461,000), Portsmouth (442,000), Reading (370,000) and Southampton (304,000).[1] Settlements closer to London are part of the conurbation known as the Greater London Urban Area.
The South East is a diverse region, with the highest percentage of people born outside of the UK outside of London. 2005 Estimates state 88.5% of people as White British, 4.5% Other White (inc. 1.0% Irish), 3.1% South Asians, 1.4% Mixed Race, 1.3% Black British, 0.6% Chinese, 0.6% Other
Education
Buckinghamshire, Medway and Kent have an almost completely selective education system - not just a few grammar schools as other English areas may have; Kent has 33, Buckinghamshire has 11 and Medway has 6. The other areas are comprehensive. In the top thirty schools at A level, all but four are selective schools. However, the results for each county as a whole are not always directly related to the number of grammar schools. At GCSE, the best performing area in the South East (and England) is Buckinghamshire. Berkshire is split into unitary authorities, and Wokingham and Slough perform the next best at GCSE. All of Berkshire's unitary authorities perform above the England average. Surrey and Hampshire perform well at GCSE as well, and Oxfordshire, West Sussex and Kent are above average. In general, the South East does perform well at GCSE compared to many regions of England, however there are a numnber of districts performing significantly below average including the unitary authorities of Portsmouth and Southampton and the districts of Adur in West Sussex, Sevenoaks in Kent and Oxford city.
At A-level, the results do not follow the same variation at GCSE except that Buckinghamshire again does very well. In general, many areas of the South East perform below the UK average. Reading unitary authority performs the best, followed closely by Buckinghamshire. The only other ceremonial county to perform well at A level is Hampshire. West Berkshire, Wokingham and Brighton and Hove unitary authorities also perform above average. The lowest performing area at A level is Southampton, followed by Bracknell Forest and East Sussex. |
