The complete ranked schools's league tables based on GCSE and A-level results 2007

If you are considering a secondary school for your child, you will find helpful information in our tables about the performance of all schools in England.

Our tables allow you to search more than 3,000 secondary schools in England by school name.

You can also search by local authority area. This will produce a list of schools, state and independent, ranked on the percentage of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and Maths.

Where scores are level, the A-level points per pupil have been used as a tie-breaker. A break down of A-level points per grade is provided in the key to the tables.

The tables show that nationally in 2007, 46 per cent of 15-year-olds achieved five GCSEs at grades A* to C, up just 0.7 percentage points on the year before.

This year’s tables contain for the first time a new measure to demonstrate school performance in science.

This innovation complements last year’s bold move by the government to raise the bar for school performance by showing how each school is performing in the basics of numeracy and literacy.

Last year’s new benchmark measured the percentage of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths. Now there is also a score to show the percentage of pupils achieving at least two passes in science at GCSE.

To qualify, pupils must achieve A* to C passes either in the double science award or any two separate GCSEs in physics, biology and chemistry (providing they are entered for all three). Alternatively, they must have A* to C passes in the single science award plus another science-based exam, such as applied science or environmental and land-based science.

While some critics may not approve of the inclusion of the science-based exams, describing them as “pub science”, the new measure does have the advantage of giving a more rounded view of school achievement and will also hopefully raise the bar for schools in this key area.

The results reveal that nationally only half of students (50.3 per cent) achieved two-grade passes (A* to C) in science.

Measures of absolute attainment need to be complemented by measures of the progress made by pupils and this is where the Contextual Value Added scores come in.

The CVA score shows how well pupils have progressed since primary school, taking into account a range of individual circumstances, such as gender, age and deprivation. But this data comes with a health warning.

CVA scores can give useful information about individual schools, but the range of values for each school is so wide that the scores are not always reliable for comparing schools against each other.

And because the CVA caps each pupil’s attainment at their best eight GCSE results, the CVA scores for the leading schools that enter pupils for more exams than that are artificially held down.

Care is needed too in interpreting this year’s results for independent schools. The fact many private schools are abandoning GCSEs in favour of the tougher International GCSEs (IGCSEs), particularly in maths, is key to this.

As the IGCSE is not officially accredited, it is not included in the figures published by the government for these tables. This is misleading because it means that top schools, including Dulwich College, Eton, Harrow, Manchester Grammar School, St Paul’s and Winchester College all score a zero in the column for the percentage of pupils gaining five or more GCSEs including English and Maths.

In reality, all six achieved a 100 per cent score when IGCSE English and maths are included.

The Independent Schools Council could have remedied this by providing the data to The Times, but refused.

The GCSE and A Level results in these tables provide only part of the picture of each school’s overall achievements. Parents can find more information in school prospectuses and school profiles on school websites, by checking recent Ofsted inspection reports and, best of all, by visiting schools.

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