Rankings

Best schools in the UK

Ranked on how much pupils improve between primary school and their GCSEs — not on raw results, which mostly reflect who a school admits. Each nation is ranked within itself, on its own published measure.

ranked schools
nations with live rankings
results year (Key Stage 4)

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Why we do not publish one UK-wide table

England measures Progress 8. Wales stopped publishing school-level performance in 2014, then restarted from 2022/23 on its own Capped 9 points measure. Scotland abolished league tables deliberately, and publishes leaver destinations per school instead. Northern Ireland publishes per-school exam results but selects academically at 11, so its threshold measure reflects intake by design. Those are different measures of different things, and adding them into a single ranked list would produce a number that looks authoritative and means nothing. Where we hold a nation's data, it is ranked within itself and says which measure it used.

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