West Yorkshire is home to a plethora of high-performing secondary schools, which make sure their young pupils heading off to secondary school have honed key academic skills.
The government’s latest preliminary performance figures for state-funded primary schools were released last month, shortly after it published its delayed performance figures for secondary schools. From this data, we’ve been able to compare how primary schools across all of West Yorkshire’s council areas did in the most recent school year, and create a league table of its top performers.
Our list is primarily based on the percentage of each school’s pupils who completed Year 6 in the 2023/24 academic year, and met the government’s expected standards in three areas: reading, writing and maths. We’ve included only schools which had at least 85% of the children in their care hit this target.
This has given both smaller village schools and those in larger centres like Leeds and Bradford the chance to shine. Some familiar names from last year’s primary school league table have also made the list again this year.
We’ve also made sure that each school included 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 the 26 schools from across West Yorkshire that came out on top:
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1. Carlton Junior and Infant School
Carlton Junior School is a primary school in Dewsbury, in the Kirklees borough. It was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted, and came in second place in our West Yorkshire rankings last year. In the 2023/24 school year, 97% of its pupils met the government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | National World
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2. Carleton Park Junior and Infant School
Carleton Park is a primary and nursery school in Pontefract, which came in first place in last year’s rankings. In a recent Ofsted inspection, it was found to be ‘outstanding’ in all categories. In the 2023/24 school year, 93% of its pupils met the expected standards in reading, writing and maths, compared to 62% locally and 60% nationally. | Google
3. Horbury Bridge Church of England Junior and Infant Academy
This is an Anglican primary school in Horbury, Wakefield. It was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 93% of its pupils also met the expected standards in reading, writing and maths, compared to 62% locally and 60% nationally. | Google
4. Jerry Clay Academy
The Jerry Clay academy is a primary school in Wrenthorpe, near Wakefield. It was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 93% of its pupils once again met the expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 62% locally and 60% nationally. | Google