Across Leeds, a whole new cohort of children will be embarking on the first step of their education journey in a matter of weeks.
Families are in the midst of the summer holidays, but the new 2025/26 school year is right around the corner - set to begin around September 1 for most schools in the area. Amongst those returning to the classroom across the wider city will be more than eight thousand children whose families applied for a new primary school place this year, with a large portion of them likely joining Reception classes.
This is where they will start to build up many of the essential school skills that will carry them through the rest of their time in education. With this in mind, we’ve taken a closer look at the top-performing primary schools across the Leeds City Council area, based on our own metric.
The key figure we use is the proportion of each school’s pupils who completed Year 6 in the most recently-completed 2023/24 academic year, who met the Government’s expected standards in three essential school skills areas: reading, writing and maths. We’ve only included schools which had over 80% of their pupils meet this important mark. It is worth noting that this data has now been finalised, so results and placings may differ slightly from earlier reports based on interim results.
On top of that, we made sure that each school included had a positive rating in its latest Ofsted inspection. These are undergoing some 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 Government standards.
Here were the 20 Leeds area schools that came out on top:
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1. Harewood Church of England Primary School
At the top of the list is this local authority-maintained Anglican primary school, in the village of Harewood, just north of the city. 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 met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
2. Shadwell Primary School
Next up is this local authority-maintained primary school in Shadwell, northeast of Leeds. It has a roll size of about 205, and in a recent Ofsted inspection, was found to be ‘good’ in all categories. 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 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
3. Roundhay School
This is a local authority-maintained all-through school in the Roundhay area. It has an overall roll size of 2,518, and was most recently rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 88% of its primary pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Yorkshire Post Newspapers
4. Horsforth Featherbank Primary School
This is a local authority-maintained primary school out in Horsforth. It has a roll size of about 209, and in a recent Ofsted inspection, was found to be ‘outstanding’ in all categories. In the 2023/24 school year, 87% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
5. St Philip's Catholic Primary School
St Philip’s is a local authority-maintained Catholic primary school in the Middleton area. It has a roll size of about 236, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 87% of its pupils also met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
6. Armley Park Primary School
This is a primary academy in the Armley area. It has a roll size of about 236, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 85% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths - compared to averages of 59% locally and 61% nationally. | Google