The Department for Education has published its average attainment 8 scores for all the city's secondary schools.placeholder image
The Department for Education has published its average attainment 8 scores for all the city's secondary schools. | Iconic/Google

The highest and lowest attaining Sunderland secondary schools based on new GCSE results data

The Department for Education (DfE) has published its average Attainment 8 scores for the city’s secondary schools with some schools scoring higher than the national average, but a significant number below.

Sunderland local authority saw pupils achieve an average GCSE Attainment 8 score of 43.6, which is below the England school average score of 46.2.

Attainment 8 looks at how pupils have performed in up to 8 Government stipulated GCSE subjects including the core subjects of maths and English, English Baccalaureate subjects - the sciences, computer science, history, geography and languages - and three DfE approved subjects which may be specific to that school.

Each GCSE grade is given a value between one to nine with maths and English given double weighting to reflect the significance of these core subjects. A school’s Attainment 8 score is the average total achieved by pupils in that year’s GCSE cohort of students.

Progress 8 scores are normally viewed as the most important attainment benchmark on which a secondary school’s performance is judged as it looks at how much progress teachers have made with pupils since joining them in Year 7, rather than just raw outcomes.

Progress 8 scores could not be calculated for this year’s 2026 cohort of students as, due to Covid, this group of pupils did not sit their Year 6 tests which are used to track GCSE progress against.

Check out the average Attainment 8 scores for the city’s secondary schools.

Special schools have not been included in this list.

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