Primary schools have the vital duty of instilling in their young pupils the academic skills they’ll need to thrive at school and beyond - and in this regard, Yorkshire has some excellent ones.
The summer holidays are in full swing for schoolchildren across the country, but before long, they’ll be due back in class for the start of the 2025/26 school year. Among them will be more than 50,000 youngsters across the region who have applied for a place at a new primary school, thousands of these which will be entering Reception classes for their very first taste of formal schooling
With a new year of learning fast on its way, we’ve revisited at the top primary schools across each of Yorkshire’s council areas, to create a league table of its top performers when it comes to teaching pupils key skills. It is based on our own unique metric, which primarily uses is the proportion of each school’s pupils that completed Year 6 in the most recently-available academic year (currently 2023/24 ), and met the Government’s expected standards in three essential areas: reading, writing and maths.
We’ve only included schools with more than 90% of their pupils hitting this target. This has allowed many smaller village schools to shine, as well as larger city schools with much larger class sizes. This data has now been finalised, so it is worth noting that results and placings may differ slightly from earlier reports based on interim results.
On top of that, we made sure that each school on our list had a positive rating in its latest Ofsted inspection. These are going through some big changes, but we’ve restricted the list to schools with either a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall grade under the previous system, or positive ratings across all categories under the current one. This means their quality of education, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and safeguarding practices all met or exceeded official standards.
Here were the 24 Yorkshire schools that made the cut:
21. England Lane Academy
England Lane is a primary academy in Knottingley, in West Yorkshire’s Wakefield district. It has a roll size of about 213, and was most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 90% of its pupils also met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 62% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
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22. Harewood Church of England Primary School
This is a local authority-maintained Anglican primary in Harewood, just north of Leeds. It has a roll size of about 96, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 90% of its pupils again met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
23. Shadwell Primary School
Another local authority-maintained primary just out of Leeds, this one is in Shadwell. It has a roll size of about 205, and in a recent Ofsted inspection, was found to be ‘good’ in every category. In the 2023/24 school year, it too had 90% of its pupils meet the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
24. St Peter's Church of England Junior, Infant and Early Years School
Rounding out the list is St Peter’s, a local authority-maintained Anglican primary school in Birstall, in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. It has a roll size of about 219, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 90% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google