Hampshire has hundreds of state primary schools in its bounds, and for families, finding that perfect fit is no easy feat.
The government’s latest preliminary performance figures for state-funded primary schools were released last week, shortly after it published delayed performance figures for secondary schools. From this data, we’ve created a league table comparing state primary schools across the Hampshire County and Southampton City Council areas (we’ve also done a separate one for Portsmouth parents here).
The key figure we’ve used is the proportion of each school’s pupils that completed Year 6, and met the government’s expected standards in three key areas: reading, writing and maths. We’ve included only Hampshire’s highest performers, which has allowed both smaller village schools, and larger ones in centres like Southampton, Winchester and Farnborough, to flex their individual strengths.
We’ve also made sure only to include schools with overall Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ before this measure was recently dropped, or, if they’ve been inspected more recently, had at least ‘good’ grades across the board. This means that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management and student safeguarding were all found to meet or exceed government standards last time the school was inspected.
Here were the 19 schools from across Hampshire that came out on top:
1. Preston Candover Church of England Primary School
This is a smaller Anglican primary school in the village of Preston Candover, near Basingstoke. It has about 98 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 100% of its pupils met the government’s expected standard in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
2. Our Lady and St Joseph Catholic Primary School
This is a Catholic primary school in Upper Pennington, Lymington, with a roll size of about 104. It was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 94% of its pupils met the government’s expected standard in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
3. St Faith's Church of England Primary School
St Faith’s is an Anglican primary school in Winchester. It has about 149 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘good’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 92% of its pupils met the government’s expected standard in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google
4. Liphook Church of England Controlled Junior School
This is an Anglican junior school in Liphook, which takes children from the age of 7. It has about 369 pupils, and was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ overall by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, 88% of its pupils met the government’s expected standard in reading, writing, and maths - compared to averages of 60% locally and 61% nationally. | Google