A young person’s secondary school years, and the qualifications they earn there, can be life changing.
Secondary schools guide teens through their GCSEs and perhaps even their A Levels. What they learn there will help pave the way and open doors for what comes next, no matter which direction their life might take. But from the time they leave primary school, there’s a lot of growth and learning that needs to happen before they are exam ready.
We’ve created a league table ranking state-funded secondary schools from across Tyne and Wear, including the North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle, Sunderland, and Gateshead council areas. It is based on their most recently-available ‘Progress 8’ scores (currently for the 2022/23 academic year, until this year’s figures are finalised and published in December or January). This is a unique figure based on GCSE results and other student achievements that measures how quickly a school’s pupils are learning and progressing, compared to peers from similar primary schools nationwide.
Any score above 0 is positive, but we’ve selected only schools with scores of 0.10 and higher - some of the county’s very highest performers. All schools on the list also had an overall Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ before this measure was dropped in September. - or for those inspected since, were found to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ across all other measures. This means that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and student safeguarding were all found to either meet or exceed government standards.
Here were the 13 top performers from across the Tyne and Wear county:
5. Norham High School
This is a secondary school in North Shields, formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 school year, it had a strong Progress 8 score of 0.40. This would usually place it in the ‘above average’ band. However, the banding for this school was ‘average’ this year, because the confidence interval spanned both above and below 0. | Google
6. Emmanuel College
Emmanuel College is a city technology college in Gateshead - one of the last schools of its sort in the country. It was most recently inspected by Ofsted last month, who marked it ‘outstanding’ across the board. In the 2022/23 school year, it had a Progress 8 score of 0.38 - or ‘above average’. | Google
7. Kings Priory School
Kings Priory is a secondary school in Tynemouth, near North Shields. It was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 school year, it also had a Progress 8 score of 0.38 - marking it as ‘above average’. | Google
8. Marden High School
Marden is a secondary school in the Cullercoats area, near North Shields, formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 school year, it had a Progress 8 score of 0.36 - marking it too as ‘above average’. | Google