How schools rank in 2024 league tables

Dunblane High School leads the board in our Tayside, Fife and Stirling take on the Scottish schools league of 2024.

We have included Stirling Council schools in The Courier Secondary Schools League for the first time and they dominate the top 10, taking the first three and seventh spots.

The best-performing schools in the other local authority areas are Kinross High School, in Perth and Kinross; Grove Academy, Dundee; Woodmill High School, in Fife; and Monifieth High School, for Angus.

An impressive 62% of Dunblane’s leavers in 202223 gained five or more Highers (or equivalent qualifications).

Five or more Highers is considered a benchmark of achievement as it’s a common entry requirement for university.

Dunfermline’s Woodmill High School surged into the top 10, with 50% of its leavers taking five or more Highers. Only 37% of the previous year’s cohort did the same.

Its huge leap in performance was beaten only by St John’s RC Academy, in Perth, which climbed 15 percentage points to take eighth place in our 2024 table.

Other schools, however, saw their performance decline from last year, most notably Kirkcaldy High School, now ranked third last. Only 13% of its 202223 leavers achieved five Highers or equivalent, compared to 27% in 2021-22.

Each year the Scottish Government publishes attainment data for every school in Scotland.

The figures our 2024 school league table is based on are the proportions of leavers to achieve five or more qualifications at SCQF level 6.

As well as Highers, this can include qualifications such as a National Certificate or Modern Apprenticeship.

Publication of school league tables is controversial, seen by many as an index of deprivation rather than a measure of individual schools’ performance.

Indeed, in all but one of our 2024 top 10 schools fewer than a fifth of pupils live in deprived areas (designated quintile one in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation).

All of the Tayside and Fife secondary schools with a majority from the most deprived areas are in the bottom half of our table.

EDUCATION: Dunblane High leads the board in The Courier Secondary Schools League.