Ofsted & Performance

School League Tables Explained: Progress 8, Attainment 8 and More

School league tables are the source of more confident, wrong conclusions than any other document in English education. Parents look at a ranked list, note which school is near the top, and stop. This guide explains what each measure in the tables actually counts, which ones are worth your attention, and one thing almost nobody realises: the single most useful measure, Progress 8, is not being published at all for 2025 or 2026.

Read it alongside our guides to reading an Ofsted report and the complete guide to school admissions in England.

There is no official league table

Start here, because it clears up a lot. The Department for Education does not publish a league table. It publishes performance data for every state school in England on the Compare school and college performance data service, free to anyone. That data is a set of separate measures shown side by side, deliberately not summed into one score or one rank.

The league tables you read about in the papers are what happens when a news organisation takes that data, picks a measure, and sorts by it. That is a legitimate thing to do, but the ranking is the newspaper's editorial choice, not an official verdict. Change the measure and the order changes.

Attainment 8: what pupils got

Attainment 8 is a pupil's average achievement across eight GCSE-level qualifications, made up of:

  • Maths, double weighted
  • English, double weighted
  • Three further qualifications that count towards the English Baccalaureate
  • Three others, either GCSEs or approved non-GCSE qualifications

Each grade converts to points, the points are added up, and the school's Attainment 8 is the average across its pupils. English and maths are double weighted to signal their importance.

What Attainment 8 measures is results. What it does not measure, at all, is what the school contributed. A school selecting or serving high-attaining children will post a strong Attainment 8 largely because of who walks through the door in Year 7. This is the single most important caveat in the whole of school data, and it is the reason Progress 8 was invented.

Progress 8: what the school added, and why it is missing

Progress 8 compares each pupil's Attainment 8 against the average result of all pupils nationally who had the same Key Stage 2 results at age 11. It is a value-added measure. A positive score means pupils did better than similar pupils elsewhere; a negative score means they did worse; zero means about average. For parents it is far more informative than raw attainment, because it is the closest thing available to measuring the school itself rather than its intake.

Here is the part that catches people out. The Department for Education states plainly that "it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026". The reason is a long shadow of the pandemic: Progress 8 needs a KS2 baseline, and the primary tests for these cohorts were cancelled in 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to COVID-19 disruption. There is no baseline, so there is no measure.

Nor was anything put in its place. In April 2024 the then government announced there would be no replacement for Progress 8 for those two years. The DfE continues to publish the attainment, entry and destination measures, and Progress 8 becomes possible again for 2026 to 2027, when a cohort with KS2 data reaches Year 11.

The practical consequence for anyone choosing a secondary school right now: the current tables show you results without context. Any ranking published from 2025 or 2026 data is, by necessity, a ranking of raw attainment, which quietly rewards schools with advantaged intakes. If you want a progress picture, look at the school's Progress 8 history from 2023/24 and earlier, and treat it as background rather than a current reading.

The EBacc, the Basics and destinations

Three more measures are worth knowing:

  • EBacc entry and achievement. The English Baccalaureate is not a qualification, it is a set of subjects: English, maths, sciences, a language, and history or geography. The tables show the share of pupils entered for the full set and the share achieving it. Read this as a description of curriculum philosophy, how academic and traditional the school is, not as a quality score. A school with a strong arts or vocational offer may have low EBacc entry by design.
  • Grade 5 or above in English and maths, often called the Basics. A useful, blunt indicator, since these two subjects gate a great deal of what a pupil can do next.
  • Destinations. The percentage of pupils in education, employment or training afterwards. Underrated, and arguably closer to what parents actually care about than any exam average.

How to read the tables sensibly

A few habits that make the data much more useful:

  • Compare like with like. Look at schools with similar intakes before drawing conclusions about quality.
  • Look across several years, not one. A single cohort can be unrepresentative, especially in a small school. The direction of travel matters more than the latest figure.
  • Check the disadvantaged pupils breakdown. How a school does for its most disadvantaged pupils tells you a lot about whether the headline number reflects teaching or intake.
  • Beware small cohorts. In a small sixth form or a small year group, a handful of pupils can swing a percentage wildly.
  • Never rank on one measure. The DfE deliberately refuses to. That is a hint.

The honest summary

League tables are worth an hour of your time and no more. They are good at showing patterns over several years, at flagging a school that is well outside the range for its context, and at telling you what a school's curriculum priorities are. They are poor at telling you whether a school will suit your child, which is the only question you are actually asking. For that you need the Ofsted report, a visit on an ordinary day, and a conversation with parents already there.

For more on choosing a school, start from the Schools Insight homepage.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are school league tables?

They are the Department for Education's published performance data for every state school in England, available free on the Compare school and college performance data service. Newspapers rank schools from that data and call the result a league table, but the official service is not a ranked list. It shows a set of separate measures, such as Attainment 8 and EBacc entry, that you are meant to read together.

What is Attainment 8?

Attainment 8 is a pupil's average GCSE achievement across eight qualifications: maths and English, both double weighted, three further qualifications counting towards the English Baccalaureate, and three others from an approved list. The points for each grade are added together, and the school's figure is the average across its pupils. It measures results, not the progress pupils made to get there.

Why is Progress 8 not published for 2025 and 2026?

Progress 8 compares GCSE results against each pupil's Key Stage 2 results, and those tests were cancelled in 2019/20 and 2020/21 because of COVID-19. The Department for Education states it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026, as there is no KS2 prior attainment data for those cohorts. No replacement measure was introduced, and Progress 8 returns for 2026 to 2027.

Is Progress 8 or Attainment 8 more important?

Progress 8 usually tells parents more, because it shows what a school added rather than the intake it started with. A school in an affluent area can post high Attainment 8 while adding little, and a school with a tougher intake can add a great deal while its raw results look ordinary. The problem right now is that Progress 8 is unavailable for 2025 and 2026, so attainment measures are all the current tables offer.

What is the EBacc?

The English Baccalaureate is not a qualification but a group of GCSE subjects: English, maths, sciences, a language, and either history or geography. The tables report the percentage of pupils entered for the full set and the percentage achieving it, which tells you how academic and traditional a school's curriculum is rather than how good it is.

Should you choose a school based on league tables?

Use them as one input among several. The data is genuinely useful for spotting patterns over time and for comparing similar schools, but it cannot tell you about the pastoral care, the strength of a particular department, or whether the place suits your child. Read the tables alongside the Ofsted report and an actual visit.