Parent Power 2024: The Times releases its list of Best UK schools & league table

It’s a return to form for the boys in this year’s Sunday Times Parent Power 2024 guide to best schools in the UK with the single-sex Wilson’s School in Wallington awarded state and grammar school of the year. Single-sex schools once again dominated the list as a whole, with two private girls schools topping the independent and combined tables and two boys-only schools grabbing the top two places in the state sector.

Sunday Times has published the 31st edition of its Parent Power guide to the best national and regional schools of the year. Amongst its findings, the Times identifies the highest-achieving schools in the UK based on their own criterion.

Parent Power is widely acknowledged and holds more than 1,600 schools in its database. If a parent, student, or teacher wants to find out about a school’s performance, they can search it by name, local authority, town and postcode.

As well as giving parents the power to identify performing schools, the list acts as an assessment of all academic results on a school-by-school basis. There are also live links to school websites and schools’ most recent inspection reports. 

Helen Davies, Editor of Parent Power, said: “The educational landscape continues to be challenging across both the state and independent sectors, and this is the first true assessment of post-pandemic exam results. 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. 

“The guide showcases academic excellence but also celebrates schools who may not be right at the top but are rising, innovating and helping pupils flourish. Being a teenager is hard enough, and the past few years since Covid have made life even harder. It is heartening to highlight the achievements of so many students and schools across the UK. 

“This year Parent Power includes details on extracurricular clubs, wellbeing initiatives and school lunch menus – chicken katsu seems to be the dish of the day.”