Grammar schools and comprehensives alike, the East Midlands is home to dozens of excellent secondaries which have this year given their communities something to celebrate.
The Department for Education has just released its new preliminary state secondary school key stage 4 performance data for the most recent academic year - meaning the country’s highest performing schools of 2024/25 can now be named. 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 Progress 8 scores, which weren’t able to be calculated due to disruptions this cohort of learners faced during the pandemic.
To help local families make sense of the new numbers, and with next year’s secondary school application deadline just over a week away, we’ve created a league table of the highest achieving state secondary schools across all of the East Midlands’ major council areas. Attainment 8 scores can go up to 90 and loosely align with GCSE 9-1 number grades, and we’ve limited our list to schools with an average score of 55 or above - similar to a strong pass of 5 or 6.
This of course, has meant many of the region’s selective grammar schools have really shone this year - especially in Lincolnshire. But since grades aren’t the only measure of a good school, we’ve also made sure each one we included had a positive mark in its latest Ofsted inspection. These are set to change in the near future, but for now, all schools must have earned either a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall grade before last September, or positive ratings across all categories if they’ve been inspected since. This means that quality of education, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and safeguarding practices all met or exceeded official standards.
Here were the 29 schools from across the East Midlands that did especially well this year:
25. Toot Hill School
Toot Hill is a secondary academy in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it too had an Attainment 8 score of 55.8 – compared to a local average of 46.7 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
26. The Minster School
The Minster is an Anglican all-through academy in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, which takes pupils from the age of 7. It was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 55.7 – compared to a local average of 46.7 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
27. Landau Forte College
Landau Forte is a secondary academy in Derby, most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 55.4 – compared to a local average of 42.2 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
28. The Trinity Catholic School
The Trinity is a Catholic secondary academy in Nottingham, most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 55.3 – compared to a local average of 42.9 and a national average of 45.9. | Google