Three Lancaster schools named in top 10 primary and secondary schools in north west in Sunday Times guide

Lancaster Girls' Grammar School is in fourth place in the Parent Power, The Sunday Times Schools Guide 2022, while Lancaster Royal Grammar School is placed seventh.

LGGS has a rating of 39th nationally, while LRGS came in 81st place in the national rankings.

Meanwhile, St Bernadette's RC Primary School in Lancaster was placed fourth in the north west for primary schools, and 21st nationally.

The rankings in the secondary school league tables are determined by the average percentage of examination entries in the three years 2017-19, gaining A* to B grades at A-level (which is given a double weighting) and the average percentage of entries returning 9-7 or A* and A grades at GCSE.

Only schools that published their results in those years or disclosed them to The Sunday Times have been included in this edition of The Sunday Times Schools Guide, which includes around 1,700 schools. Examination outcomes from 2020 and 2021 have not been used in determining this year’s Parent Power rankings.

At LGGS, 75.6 per cent of pupils gained A-level grades at A*-B while 77.4 per cent gained GCSE grades at A*/A/9/8/7.

At LRGS, 72.7 per cent gained A-level grades at A*-B while 61.3 per cent gained GCSE grades at A*/A/9/8/7.

Primary school rankings are based on the average outcomes achieved by schools in Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in the three years, 2017-19.

The guide aggregated the scaled scores – where 100 indicates the standard which children are expected to achieve aged 11 – for reading; grammar, punctuation and spelling; and maths in each of the three years and ranked schools on the average aggregated score.

St Bernadette's had an averaged scaled score in reading of 110.7, in grammar of 114.3, and in maths of 111.0, giving an overall score of 336.0.

Alastair McCall, editor of Parent Power, said: “The need for clarity about school examination performance has never been greater after two years of teacher assessed grades, during which for completely understandable reasons, the numbers of top grades increased dramatically.

“We felt it was important to go back to the last sets of moderated public examination outcomes from 2019, 2018 and 2017 to get the most accurate and current view of school academic achievement. By taking a three-year average, we mitigated against relatively poor performance in a one-off year.

“At a time when some schools are making hard to substantiate claims of academic prowess based on outcomes from 2021 and 2020, we believe these rankings – and all the additional information on offer in Parent Power – provide parents with a more reliable guide to academic achievement in schools today.”

The 29th edition of Parent Power identifies the highest-achieving schools in the UK. As well as assessment of all academic results on a school-by-school basis, Parent Power enables parents to compare the performance of a given school with other schools in the same town, local authority or nationally.

Parent Power is widely acknowledged as the most authoritative survey of the country’s highest-achieving schools.

The full list can be found here or in a supplement with The Sunday Times on Sunday December 5.