Secondary school results explained: GCSEs, Attainment 8 and Progress 8
What Attainment 8, Progress 8, the English and maths pass rates and the EBacc mean, how to read Progress 8 and its confidence interval, and why the latest Progress 8 is from 2023/24.
Checked 18 October 2026 against the official sources listed at the end.
At the end of Year 11 (key stage 4), the Department for Education (DfE) publishes each school’s GCSE results. Its headline measures are Progress 8, Attainment 8, the percentage of pupils getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, EBacc entry, the EBacc average point score, and pupil destinations.
Which years we show
- 2025/26 results are provisional (published 15 October 2026). The DfE will revise them, with the next update due in February 2027. We label them “provisional”.
- The provisional data has no EBacc figures, so for EBacc we show 2024/25.
- Progress 8 is from 2023/24, the latest year it was calculated (see below).
Every figure on a school page shows its year.
Attainment 8
A pupil’s results across 8 qualifications:
- maths, double-weighted;
- English, double-weighted if the pupil took both English language and literature;
- the best 3 English Baccalaureate qualifications (sciences, computer science, history, geography, languages);
- the best 3 other approved GCSEs or technical awards.
The school figure is the average across its pupils. Attainment 8 partly reflects pupils’ starting points: the DfE says it will “caution users about the limitations of using attainment only data to interpret school performance” in years without Progress 8.
English and maths
The percentage of pupils with grade 5 or above (a “strong pass”) in both English and maths GCSEs. We also show grade 4 or above (a “standard pass”).
EBacc
The English Baccalaureate has 5 “pillars”: English, maths, science, history or geography, and a language. EBacc entry is the percentage of pupils entered for all of them. The EBacc average point score “measures pupils’ point scores across the 5 pillars of the EBacc”.
How to read Progress 8
Progress 8 compares pupils’ Attainment 8 results with pupils across England who had similar results at the end of primary school (key stage 2).
- Zero: “pupils, on average, did as well at KS4 as other pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS2”.
- Above zero: “pupils made more progress, on average, than pupils across England who got similar results at the end of KS2”. Below zero means less progress.
- “A negative progress score does not mean pupils made no progress, or the school has failed.”
Look at the confidence interval too — the range shown around the score. Small year groups have wider ranges, and “Both the Progress 8 score and the confidence interval for a school should be considered when comparing”. The DfE also gives each school a banding: well above average, above average, average, below average or well below average.
“Progress 8 is a relative, in-year measure and cannot be compared directly year on year.”
Why the latest Progress 8 is from 2023/24
The DfE says: “It is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026, as there is no Key Stage 2 (KS2) prior attainment data available”. Those pupils’ primary school tests were cancelled in 2020 and 2021. There is no replacement measure. The DfE continues to show the most recent Progress 8 scores (2023/24), and says Progress 8 can be produced again for 2026/27.
So on ABC Edu, Progress 8 is the 2023/24 figure, clearly dated, next to the newer Attainment 8 and English and maths results. It describes a different group of pupils from the newer results.
Things to keep in mind
- Figures are hidden when very few pupils are involved, and some measures are “not available” in some years. We show these in words, never as zero.
- England figures are for state-funded schools, as the DfE publishes them, for the same year.
- The DfE says: “Conclusions should not be drawn on a single piece of data alone.”