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When it comes to England’s highest performing state secondary schools, selective grammar schools tend to dominate the league tables. But hiding among them are some other truly exceptional schools, where pupils from a wider range of academic starting points are coached to achieve to the best of their abilities. The Department for Education has this month released its new preliminary state secondary school performance data for the most recent 2024/25 academic year. But this year, the default metric schools are sorted by is their Attainment 8 score - a purely performance-based figure derived from learners’ results in up to eight GCSEs. It is temporarily standing in for the usual pupil improvement-based Progress 8 scores, which weren’t able to be calculated due to disruptions this cohort of learners faced during the pandemic. This means that schools which are able to select their pupils based on their academic performance have come out on top, perhaps even more so than usual. To level the playing field a little, we’ve gone through the country’s highest performing schools to pick out those with non-selective admissions policies which still managed to rank among England’s best. Each of these schools had some of the highest Attainment 8 scores in the country, and stellar Ofsted reports at the time of their latest inspection too. If more than one school had the same score, they have been ordered as they appeared on the Government’s compare schools site. It is worth noting, however, that even though all of them have admissions policies recorded as non-selective, some are technically partially selective - meaning they do allocate some places based on academic or musical ability if they are oversubscribed. Some are also faith schools, which may allocate places based on a family’s religious affiliations if too many pupils apply. Here were the 13 schools which really shone this year: Related topics: SchoolsGCSEsEnglandBoost
