No matter where in the North West of England they may be, families should have no trouble finding an excellent local primary school for their child - new official performance data shows.
The government’s latest preliminary performance figures for state-funded primary schools were released last week, shortly after it published delayed performance figures for secondary schools. From this data, we’ve created a league table ranking state primary schools across the North West, including Cumbria, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and Merseyside.
The key figure it is based on is the percentage of each school’s pupils who completed Year 6 in the most recently ended school year, 2023-24, who met the government’s expected standards in three essential school skills: reading, writing and maths. We’ve included only the very highest-performing primary schools, which not only gave smaller village and community schools the chance to shine, but also let larger schools with hundreds of pupils prove they too could excel.
Each school included also had an overall Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ before this measure was recently dropped, or, if they’ve been inspected more recently, had at least ‘good’ grades across the board. This means that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management and student safeguarding were all found to meet or exceed government standards last time the school was inspected.
Here are 18 schools from across the North West that did particularly well in the latest school year:
1. Broadbottom Church of England Primary School
At the top of the list is this Anglican primary school in the village of Broadbottom, in Tameside, Greater Manchester. It has about 81 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 100% of its pupils met the government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
2. Crawford Village Primary School
Another village primary school, this one is in Crawford, Lancashire. It has about 82 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 100% of its pupils also met the government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
3. Peover Superior Endowed Primary School
This is a primary school in the Over Peover area, near Knutsford in Cheshire East. It has about 96 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 100% of its pupils met the government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 63% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
4. Yarlside Academy
Yarlside is a primary school in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, with about 245 pupils. In a recent Ofsted inspection, it was found to be ‘outstanding’ across the board. In the 2023/24 school year, 100% of its pupils also met the government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 58% locally and 61% nationally. | Google