School Context Comparator

Exam results say a lot about a school's pupils, not just its teaching. A school where many children are disadvantaged or have special educational needs will usually have lower results, even if it's doing a great job. This compares each school with what you'd expect from the pupils it teaches.

Area

Every secondary school in England: GCSE results in context

Attainment 8, 2024/25. Each dot is one of 2,979 state secondary schools. Above the line means better results than you'd expect from its pupils; the shaded strip is "about what you'd expect".

Better than expected
About as expected
Below expected

Loading stats for 2,979 schools across England…

Did you know? Attainment 8 is the average of a pupil's best eight GCSE-level grades, with English and maths counting twice. How this works

Well above 448 schools (15%)
Above 492 schools (17%)
As expected 981 schools (33%)
Below 663 schools (22%)
Well below 395 schools (13%)

Choose your area above to see how the schools near you compare, by name.

How this works

We looked at every comparable state secondary school in England (3,053 schools) to see how GCSE results usually change with the make-up of a year group. On average:

For every 10 more disadvantaged pupils in every 100, Attainment 8 is about 3.3 points lower.
For every 10 more pupils with SEN in every 100, it's about 1.3 points lower.
For every 10 more pupils with English as an additional language in every 100, it's about 1.3 points higher. Pupils learning English often catch up quickly.

From those, each school gets an expected score for its own pupils, and we compare that with its actual score. A gap of less than about 2.3 points either way is normal variation, so we call it "about what you'd expect". More than 5.7 points is "well" above or below.

What we found: schools where teachers stay

We put every secondary school's result-against-expected next to its teacher turnover – the share of its teachers who moved to another school or left state schools each year, averaged over three years (DfE school workforce census). Across 2,915 schools in England, split into four equal groups by turnover:

Teacher turnover	Typical turnover	Results vs expected	Did better than expected
Lowest turnover	9% a year	+1.4 points	40%
Lower-middle	14% a year	+0.6 points	35%
Upper-middle	18% a year	−0.3 points	27%
Highest turnover	26% a year	−1.2 points	26%

Results rise step by step as turnover falls. The difference between the schools where teachers stay most and those where they leave most is 2.6 Attainment 8 points – about a quarter of a grade in every GCSE subject. That's after allowing for each school's pupils, so it isn't simply that schools in harder circumstances lose more teachers (they do – but the link is still there once that's taken into account).

A link isn't proof that one causes the other: losing teachers may hold results back, and a school that's struggling for other reasons (leadership, for example) may also lose more teachers. Nationally, turnover is fairly steady from year to year and teachers who move are replaced – but between schools it varies a lot, from under one teacher in ten a year to more than one in five. The green rings on the chart mark the lowest-turnover quarter.

What it can't tell you

These three things explain only about 38% of the differences between schools. Much of what makes a school stronger or weaker, and much about its pupils, isn't captured by any published figure.
It's one year of results. A single year group can be unusually strong or weak, so treat close calls as roughly equal.
It isn't an excuse for lower results. It shows how a school does compared with schools teaching similar pupils, so you can compare more fairly.
Grammar schools aren't compared, because they choose pupils by ability, which these figures don't measure.
We deliberately don't adjust for attendance or exclusions: those are partly down to the school itself.

Source: Department for Education, Key Stage 4 performance data (2024/25). Calculated by The School Companion.