Breadalbane Academy is top in our Tayside and Fife take on the Scottish schools league table of 2023.
The small Perthshire secondary school – which has only around 430 pupils – had the highest proportion of school leavers last year with five or more Highers.
Some 54% of young people who left Breadalbane Academy in 2021/22 had at least five of the qualifications – a standard regarded as a benchmark of achievement as it is often an entry requirement for university.
In second place is Kinross High School and third is Fife’s Madras College, in St Andrews – last year’s joint leader – both with 51%.
Monifieth High School, last year’s other leader, comes fourth in our table and first for Angus, with 49% of leavers taking away five or more Highers.
Perth and Kinross Council schools continue a run of success for the region, with Perth High School and The Community School of Auchterarder ranking fifth and sixth, with 48% and 45%.
Top performing Dundee school is Grove Academy, coming at number seven with 44% of its leavers gaining five or more Highers.
You can find out where your local school ranked in The Courier Schools League for Tayside and Fife.
Scottish schools league table 2023: Tayside and Fife
Some schools saw significant improvement in their rates of Higher attainment from the previous year.
Auchmuty High School, in Glenrothes, climbs 14 places up our table, with its percentage increasing from 23 in 2020/21 to 29.
Neighbouring Glenrothes High School as well as St John’s RC High School and St Paul’s RC Academy, both in Dundee, all climb 10 places.
But there are also some considerable drops, most notably by Montrose Academy which goes down 19 places, with its percentage declining from 41 to 23.
Glenwood High School, in Glenrothes, and Brechin High School, are both down by 17 places.
League table of deprivation?
Publication of school league tables is controversial, seen by many as an index of deprivation rather than a measure of individual schools’ performance.
Indeed, the top 11 schools in our chart have fewer than 10% of their pupils living in the most deprived areas of Scotland (quintile one of five in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation).
All of the Tayside and Fife secondary schools with upwards of 40% of their pupils from the most deprived areas are in the bottom half of our table.
Data on the qualifications gained by school leavers of every state school in Scotland is published annually by the Scottish Government.
This also includes virtual comparator figures, which measure sample groups of pupils against those in other parts of Scotland with similar characteristics including gender, additional support needs and the deprivation level of the area they live in.
Conversation