Secondary schools
How to compare secondary schools using official data
A practical guide to comparing secondary schools in England using Progress 8, Attainment 8, GCSE results, attendance and pupil destinations.
Start with the right comparison
School results are most useful when they are compared with schools serving similar pupils and with the local-authority and England benchmarks for the same academic year. A single headline percentage cannot describe teaching quality, pupil experience or how well a school will suit an individual child.
Begin with a shortlist based on practical factors such as travel, admissions eligibility, school size and available provision. Performance measures can then help you ask better questions rather than make the entire decision for you.
Progress 8 and Attainment 8
Attainment 8 summarises pupils’ achievement across eight qualifications. A higher score usually means pupils achieved stronger grades, but intake differences matter.
Progress 8 estimates how much progress pupils made between key stage 2 and key stage 4 compared with pupils nationally who had similar prior attainment. Positive and negative values need context, including the confidence interval and whether the Department for Education published the measure for that year.
- Use Attainment 8 to understand the level of results achieved.
- Use Progress 8 to explore progress relative to similar starting points.
- Compare the same academic year and note years affected by missing or altered measures.
GCSE measures and EBacc
The percentage achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths is a useful strong-pass measure. Grade 4 or above is the standard-pass measure. EBacc entry shows the proportion entered for the English Baccalaureate subject combination, while the EBacc average point score reflects performance across those subjects.
These measures describe different things. A school can have a strong grade 5 result and a lower EBacc entry rate because of its curriculum choices, pupil needs or qualification offer.
Attendance, cohort size and destinations
Always check the cohort size beside a result. Percentages based on a small group can move sharply from one year to the next. Looking across several years gives a steadier picture.
Attendance and persistent absence provide context, while pupil-destination measures show the proportion continuing in sustained education, employment or training. Destinations are normally published later than exam results, so the latest available year may differ.
Questions to take to an open day
Ask how the school supports pupils with different starting points, how option subjects are allocated, what intervention looks like, and which destinations pupils typically progress to. Official data tells you what happened to a cohort; the visit helps you understand how the school works day to day.