The UK’s top 10 comprehensive state secondary schools for 2025 have been named by the Sunday Times

Picking a secondary school for your offspring can feel like a pretty big deal. It’s the place they’re going to spend the next seven years of their lives in, so it’s only natural you want to make the right choice. And there’s no shortage of great schools to choose from in the UK – our private schools, in particular, rank among the best on the planet.

But not everyone wants to fork out tens of thousands of pounds every year to send their kids to school, and you don’t have to either. The UK is also home to a bunch of fantastic state schools, and the Sunday Times has just released its Parent Power guide for 2025, one of the most prestigious rankings out there. Helping parents out by providing a ‘reliable guide to academic achievement in schools’, the Times guide ranks schools based on A-level and GCSE performance.

And this year, a number of state schools beat some of the priciest private schools in the UK with their results. The highest-placing fully comprehensive school was Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School in Blackburn, which came 196th.

The highest-placing partially selective school, meaning some students get in through test and some don’t, was Dame Alice Owen’s School in Hertfordshire. Dame Alice is 37.5 percent selective. 

Here are the top 10 fully comprehensive state secondary schools in the Times’ 2025 Parent Power guide.

The UK’s best comprehensive state secondary schools for 2025

1. Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School, Blackburn
2. St Andrew’s Catholic School, Leatherhead
3. St Paul’s School For Girls, Edgbaston
4. Impington Village College, Impington
5. JFS, Harrow
6. JCoss (Jewish Community Secondary School), Barnet
7. The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, London
8. Sandringham School, St Albans
9. Hasmonean School For Girls, London
10. Mossbourne Community Academy, London

The Sunday Times also awarded other individual awards to schools across the UK. Here’s the breakdown of those.  

You can find the full league table, with hundreds more schools – including grammar and private schools – on the Sunday Times website here.

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If that didn’t quite help you make your mind up, we’ve got you covered with many more school rankings. These are the UK’s best state secondary schools based on 2024 GCSE results, according to Which School Advisor. We’ve also got a list of England’s 10 best private schools based on this year’s A-level and GCSE results, with the best private school in the country being in London. And if you’re already planning ahead, you might want to check out which school is the best for getting students Oxbridge offers. 

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