Leicestershire prides itself on being home to an extensive collection of high performing secondary schools, and this year’s GCSE season has reinforced what excellent learning environments they really are.
The Government’s preliminary performance figures for state-funded secondary schools across England, for the most recently-ended 2024/25 school year, have now been released. This year the usual improvement-based Progress 8 scores haven’t been calculated, and instead, the default metric available to compare schools is their Attainment 8 scores.
These are a purely performance-based figure derived from pupils’ results in up to eight GCSEs or similar qualifications. They go up to 90 and roughly align with GCSE 9-1 number grades, with the national average being 45.9 this year - somewhere between the standard and strong passing grades of 4 to 5.
The celebrate the county’s schools which have excelled in this measure, we’ve created a league table of this year’s highest achievers across the Leicester City and Leicestershire County council areas. We’ve only featured local schools with scores of at least 50, and in cases where two had identical scores, they’ve been ordered alphabetically.
But grades aren’t everything, which is why we’ve also checked to make sure each school included had a positive mark in its latest Ofsted inspection. These are set to change this month, but for now, we’ve only included schools with either a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall grade before last September, or positive ratings across all categories if they’ve been inspected since.
Here were the Leicestershire’s top 18 for 2025:
5. De Lisle College
De Lisle is a Catholic secondary academy and sixth form in Loughborough, most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 55.1 – compared to a local average of 46.2 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
6. St Paul's Catholic School
St Paul’s is a Catholic secondary academy in Leicester. It was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 54.5 – compared to a local average of 45.4 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
7. Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy
Saint Martin’s is a Catholic secondary academy in Stoke Golding, near Hinckley. It was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 54.3 – compared to a local average of 46.2 and a national average of 45.9. | Google
8. English Martyrs' Catholic School
This is a Catholic secondary academy in Leicester, most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2024/25 school year, it had an Attainment 8 score of 54 – compared to a local average of 45.4 and a national average of 45.9. | Google