Across the North West, nearly 75 thousand children have just kicked off their learning journey at a new primary school.
The six-week summer holidays are now over for most of the region’s young learners, and the 2025/26 school year has begun in earnest. But even for very small children who have only just entered Reception, the next few years will be important ones - where they start building up essential skills that will form the foundations of their learning for years to come.
To mark the occasion, and to celebrate the North West schools which have done especially well at making sure their pupils master these skills, we’ve revisited the top-performing primary schools across all of the major council areas - spanning Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, and Cumbria - using our own unique metric. The key figure this uses is the proportion of each school’s pupils who completed Year 6 in the most recent academic year (currently 2023/24), and met the Government’s expected standards in three essential school skills areas: reading, writing and maths.
We’ve only included the very top schools, from both villages and cities alike, which had most of their pupils achieve this aspirational target. But as an parent will know, performance isn’t the only marker of an excellent learning environment - so we’ve also limited our league table to schools with a positive mark in their latest Ofsted inspection.
These are going through an overhaul at the moment, but all schools included had either a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall grade under the previous system, or positive ratings across all categories under the current one. This means that quality of education, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and safeguarding practices all met or exceeded Government standards.
Here were the 31 schools from across the North West which shone particularly bright:
9. New Longton All Saints CofE Primary School
All Saints is a local authority-maintained Anglican primary school in the Lancashire village of New Longton, just south of Preston. It has about 216 pupils, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 97% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
10. St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Billinge
This is a local authority-maintained Catholic primary school in Billinge, near St Helens in Merseyside. It has a roll size of about 200, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 97% of its pupils again met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
11. Kincraig Primary School
Kincraig is a local authority-maintained primary school in Bispham, in Blackpool, Lancashire. It has about 233 pupils, and was most recently rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 96% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 53% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
12. Thornton Hough Primary School
This is a local authority-maintained primary school in Thornton Hough, in Merseyside’s Wirral borough. It has a roll size of about 180, and was most recently rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 96% of its pupils met the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing, and maths – compared to averages of 54% locally and 61% nationally. | Google