GCSE league table · Attainment 8 · 2026
GCSE league tables: best secondary schools in England
The latest GCSE league tables (2025-26) rank state secondary schools in England on Attainment 8, the DfE's headline measure of GCSE results across eight subjects. 3,919 schools are ranked below, each at its national rank. No editorial weighting, no paid placement — every figure comes from the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance tables.
3,919 schools are ranked nationally. Filter by school type or funding, sort any column, and follow each school through to its full profile.
- Source: DfE Key Stage 4 performance tables
- 3,919 schools ranked on Attainment 8
- No editorial weighting · no paid placement
3,919 schools · ranked by Attainment 8
Select a school for a quick look, or its name for the full profile
“Previous” is each school’s published rank in 2024-25. National ranks are the published ranks. Bars show each score on the full Attainment 8 scale (0–90).
Method
How this table is built
Published figures, ranked in the open. No editorial weighting, no paid placement.
Source and year
Every figure comes from the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance tables — 2025-26 results. Schoolwize ranks the published figures; nothing is adjusted, weighted or editorialised.
What Attainment 8 measures
Attainment 8 is a pupil's average GCSE performance across eight subject slots — English, maths, three English Baccalaureate subjects and three further approved qualifications — converted into a points score and averaged across the school's cohort. A higher score means stronger average grades.
Progress 8 — the progress measure
Attainment measures the grades pupils achieved; Progress 8 measures the progress they made since primary school. The DfE did not publish Progress 8 for 2024-25 or 2025-26 while it rebuilds the primary-school baseline, so this view ranks Attainment 8 — switch to the Progress 8 view to rank schools on their latest published progress scores. Schools with academically selective intakes also top any attainment-ranked table: a high rank reflects the school's intake as well as its teaching.
Who is in the table
Only open schools with a published Attainment 8 score appear — 3,919 in 2025-26. Schools without the measure are simply absent; we never pad the table with synthetic rows, and closed schools and register-removed types are excluded.
Ties and movement
Equal scores share a rank (1, 2, 2, 4 — standard competition ranking). The movement column compares each school's rank against 2024-25: small movements are noise — cohorts and the set of schools publishing results change every year — so read ▲/▼ as a signal, not a verdict. "New" means the school has no comparable rank in 2024-25.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What is Attainment 8?
Attainment 8 is the DfE's headline GCSE attainment measure: a points score averaging each pupil's results across eight subject slots (English, maths, three EBacc subjects and three further qualifications). Ranking by it compares schools on the average grades their pupils achieved.
Which schools appear in this table?
Every open school in England with a published Attainment 8 score for 2025-26 — 3,919 in total, state and independent. Schools without the measure are absent rather than padded with placeholders.
Why do selective schools dominate the top of the table?
Attainment 8 measures results achieved, not progress made. Grammar schools and other academically selective schools admit stronger-than-average cohorts, so they top almost any attainment-ranked table. That is an intake effect, not proof of teaching quality.
How are tied scores handled?
Schools with identical scores share a rank, and the next rank skips accordingly (1, 2, 2, 4) — standard competition ranking, the same convention the DfE uses.
How current is the data?
The table shows the latest published DfE Key Stage 4 performance data (2025-26). Schoolwize refreshes automatically as the DfE publishes each new release — no manual updates, no stale copies.