LEP 140: Celebrating Lancashire's 14 best performing secondary schools as pupils return after half-term

As it is the Lancashire Post’s 140th birthday celebrations, we’re sharing 14 galleries celebrating some of the very best things about our county.

For our latest gallery, we’re highlighting Lancashire’s best-performing secondary schools as pupils prepare to return to their classrooms after the October half term.

Each year, the Department for Education (DfE) publishes a Progess 8 score for each school, based on their performance during the last lot of GCSEs.

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.

Analysis of the 2026 GCSE results is not yet available but below we are celebrating the Lancashire secondary schools who were recognised for achieving the strongest results in 2025.

Progress 8 scores could not be calculated for the 2025 cohort of students as, due to Covid, this group of pupils did not sit their Year 6 tests.

Instead Attainment 8 scores looked at how pupils performed in up to eight Government stipulated GCSE subjects with each grade being given a value between one to nine- maths and English are given double weighting to reflect the significance of these core subjects.

Take a look at the Lancashire schools who most helped their pupils reach their full potential below...

As well as celebrating the county’s best schools, so far in our Lancashire Post 140th celebration galleries we’ve looked at the legendary Lancastrians who made history over the years, the famous faces who keep our county’s name in lights today, the famous brands that began life in Lancashire, the best restaurants in Lancashire, .