Since taking on the headship, Fenton,the son of the late glam rock star Alvin Stardust, has not just pioneered AI but introduced sleep lessons. He also transforms the school site into a fairground before students go off on study leave. (He also dug out Starmer’s old school report, which said he was “a most promising boy” in 1980. The prime minister won a place by sitting the 11-plus exam when the school was a state grammar; it became an independent school during his time there. )

The Sunday Times analysis of this year’s top A-level and GCSE results, weighted according to our methodology, reveals:

• Girls’ schools again top the Parent Power academic league table. Five girls’ schools are in the top ten in the rankings for private and state schools. They include St Paul’s Girls’ School, in London, which retains the top spot and is awarded Independent Secondary School of the Year for Academic Excellence 2025.

• The highest-ranked boys’ school is St Paul’s School, in second place. Brighton College, in third place, is the highest-ranked coeducational independent.

• Of the 16 private schools in the top 20, 11 are in Greater London, with just one in the Midlands and four in the southeast of England.

• Wycombe Abbey rose five places in the independent league table, reflecting the national resurgence of girls’ schools, and Eton College achieved double-digit growth to return to the national top 25.

• The Haberdashers’ Girls’ and Boys’ Schools debuted at 18th and joint 30th among independent schools. And, again illustrating the academic power of single-sex education, Benenden and Radley College also rose, up 33 and 22 places respectively.

If Tony Blair’s Labour government came in crying “Education, education, education”, now it’s “VAT, VAT, VAT”. The independent sector is facing one of its biggest challenges after the government announced its plans to remove the 20 per cent tax exemption on private school fees from January 2025. Labour plans to use the estimated £1.3 billion this would raise to recruit more specialist state school teachers.

The sector has warned that some smaller schools may be driven out of business and that others may have to cut the number of bursaries offered to children whose families could not otherwise afford to pay for a private education.

Many schools are opening outposts abroad to raise fee income as well as educate pupils for global careers. RGS has some eight partner schools around the world, including in Hanoi in Vietnam and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, bearing its name. “We have online assemblies here led by the head girl in the school in Riyadh; our pupils go on music tours to the school in Vietnam and we have an online chess tournament and an annual global leadership conference where the pupils come together,” Fenton says.

A pioneer of the global outlook, Brighton College rose eight places to be back in the national top 10 and took triple honours: the overall Independent Secondary Boarding School of the Year 2025, Independent Secondary School of the Year for Academic Excellence in the Southeast 2025 and the overall Independent Secondary School of the Year for A-levels 2025. And, like more and more schools in the independent league table, it has opened up four prep schools, including BCP Kensington, and seven international schools — including one in London and others in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Hanoi. Looking to secure their financial future, other private schools are joining forces under the auspices of a trust to share learning as well as costs, and looking to merge with prep schools to keep the students coming through.

Hill House School, near Doncaster, the Independent Secondary School of the Year in the North 2025, is extending bus routes to bring in pupils from as far afield as Pontefract, Gainsborough, Sheffield and Worksop, and outlying former mining villages such as Mexborough. In a further move to widen access, Year 7 sports scholarships will be introduced in September 2025.

Despite the independent sector’s anxieties, many fee-paying schools are thriving. At Westminster School, which ranks fifth in the national league table and is Independent Secondary School of the Year for GCSEs 2025, the head, Dr Gary Savage, is planning for full coeducation in 2028 and will undertake a curriculum review of Key Stage 3 leading into Key Stage 4. “The aim is to retain a common currency of GCSEs, whilst developing further opportunities for independent interdisciplinary work, AI and digital literacy,” Savage says.

Flexibility in the timetable and the ability to study across science and humanities subjects in the sixth form is a growing movement across the sector as schools push for teachers to inspire young people beyond the curriculum. At the Maynard School, in Exeter, Liz Gregory took up the post as head teacher four years ago, and her vision, based on investing in pedagogy, saw the school rise 38 places to make it into the national top 100 private schools. It takes the Independent Secondary School of the Year in the Southwest 2025 title.

It means that pupils can continue with both Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) and humanities. “Girls can study physics and fashion and textiles, or English, chemistry and maths,” Gregory says.

Students have also worked with teachers on the refurbishment of the sixth-form centre that opened this term.With the question of how best to support children with special educational needs now a national issue, this pioneering school has created quiet booths to help those who have been diagnosed with ADHD and other neurodiverse conditions.

*If a school does not appear on the Parent Power league table it is most likely to be because it did not respond to our requests for its A-level and GCSE results and the results could not be found in the public domain.

School league tables 2025

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