Butterfly National Schools Finals show English table tennis's rising depth

That scale matters because the schools game is no longer a narrow, four-team finish line. The 2025/26 team-finals format expanded to eight teams in each category and switched to a progressive knockout, with the winner of each of seven Area Finals going straight through and one highest-ranked runner-up joining them. It is a better fit for the sport’s base in England, where 51 Schools County Associations affiliated to Table Tennis England run qualifying events across the country. The old English Schools Table Tennis Association spent 50 years running these competitions before merging with Table Tennis England in 2017 and dissolving itself in 2018, and the current structure still reflects that long county-to-area-to-national pathway.

London Academy once again looked like the benchmark, taking three team titles across the finals at Wolverhampton. That followed four titles in 2025 and three in 2024, when Charles Read Academy claimed two. The numbers show a programme that keeps producing, but they also show that the schools scene is broad enough for others to break through. Fox Primary, Ashford Prep, Churchfields Junior School and Shakespeare Primary all reached later stages, underlining how many different school environments are feeding the national event.

The finals themselves were not strolls. London Academy beat Gladstone Road Primary School 6-1 in the Under-11 Girls final for the Martin Foulser Cup, but two of those matches went all the way to a decider. In the Under-11 Boys final for the Irene Elliott Cup, London Academy and Haberdashers’ School were level at 2-2 before the champions pulled away. That is the kind of pressure school competitions do better than almost anything else in English table tennis: players learn to handle a tie, a team bench, and a big-point swing while still competing in a school shirt.