Durham Johnston School is top performing secondary in the North East

The rankings, published online today in Parent Power, The Sunday Times Schools Guide 2022, show Durham Johnston, ranked at 128th nationally, takes the top spot as the best-performing state secondary school in the region.

Figures show that 75.6 per cent of pupils at Durham Johnston achieved A-level grades A* - B in the rankings by The Times according to exam results from 2017-19.

Read more: Ripon Grammar School celebrates top spot in the North

It is followed by Queen Elizabeth High School in Hexham and St Leonard's RC School in Durham.

Egglescliffe School in Stockton and Carmel College in Darlington are ranked fifth and sixth best in the North East and 270th and 271st nationally.

Just one North East school, the Royal Grammar School Junior School in Newcastle makes any of the national top ten tables, coming in at ninth in the best preparatory schools in the country.

The schools have been ranked by The Times according to exam results from 2017-19.

Durham Johnston School Picture: Google

Only schools that published their results in those years or disclosed them to The Sunday Times have been included in this edition of The Sunday Times Schools Guide, which includes around 1,700 insitutions.

In the independent sector, the top three in the North East are the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, Yarm School and Newcastle High School for Girls.

The top three best performing primary schools in the region are St Joseph's RC Primary School in Sunderland, Staindrop C of E Primary School near Darlington and Benedict Biscop C of E Academy also in Sunderland.

Staindrop C of E Primary School

Primary school rankings are based on the average outcomes achieved by schools in Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in the three years, 2017-19.

Schools North East congratulated those that have made it into the top ten in our region.

However, the organisation said that the Times’ rankings only tell a very small part of a very complex issue.

Schools in the North East have increasingly been recognised for the hard work they do to support disadvantaged students, especially with the move from attainment data to curriculum delivery in Ofsted inspections.

In the most recent Ofsted inspections published, 87 per cent of schools in the region were ranked Good or Outstanding.

This is above the national average, behind only London, the South East, and the North West.

Despite this high performance in often challenging circumstances, no North East school made the Times’ top ten rankings.

Schools North East has received a number of enquiries asking why this is the case, resurrecting the longstanding myth of a North - South ‘gap’ in the competence of school staff.

It says this narrative isn’t accurate as it relies on measures of school performance which fail to take context and pupil characteristics into account, mistakenly presenting economic and geographical factors as ones of school ‘competence’.

Schools North East says the gap in attainment is not the result of ‘underperforming’ schools and the region has some of the highest areas of deprivation in the country, which has a clear impact on educational attainment.

Chris Zarraga, director at Schools North East, said: "The inaccurate narrative of a gap in school performance between the North and South is incredibly damaging to the schools and teachers across the North who work so hard and effectively every day to help their students achieve their fullest potential.

"This is especially so following the efforts school staff have made across the country during the pandemic, going above and beyond as the nation’s ‘fourth emergency service’ to meet the needs of children and young people.

"At Schools North East, we are committed to dispelling this false narrative, and stressing the importance of taking into account the contextual challenges all schools face."

Examination outcomes from 2020 and 2021 have not been used in determining this year’s Parent Power rankings as Alastair McCall, editor of Parent Power, explains: “The need for clarity about school examination performance has never been greater after two years of centre- and teacher-assessed grades, during which for completely understandable reasons, the numbers of top grades increased dramatically.

Yarm School

“We felt it was important to go back to the last sets of moderated public examination outcomes from 2019, 2018 and 2017 to get the most accurate and current view of school academic achievement.

“By taking a three-year average, we mitigated against relatively poor performance in a one-off year.

“At a time when some schools are making hard to substantiate claims of academic prowess based on outcomes from 2021 and 2020, we believe these rankings – and all the additional information on offer in Parent Power – provide parents with a more reliable guide to academic achievement in schools today.”

All the rankings, as well as assessment of all academic results on a school-by-school basis are revealed in The Sunday Times Schools Guide 2022, available online today and as a supplement with The Sunday Times on December 5.

Keep up to date with all the latest news on our website, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You can also follow our dedicated County Durham Facebook page for all the latest in the area by clicking here.

For all the top news updates from right across the region straight to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter here.

Have you got a story for us? Contact our newsdesk on newsdesk@nne.co.uk or contact 01325 505054