Levenshulme High School

About Levenshulme High School

Levenshulme High School’s headline Progress 8 score of 0.91 is a striking outlier against the Manchester local authority average of 0.18 for secondary schools. That gap — over four times the LA benchmark — places the school firmly in the “well above average” national banding, and it ranks third out of 31 schools in Manchester. In the North West region, it sits 13th out of 445, and nationally it lands in the top 4% of all schools. This is a school that consistently delivers academic results far beyond what its local context might suggest, and it does so with a pupil intake where over half (51.8%) are eligible for free school meals — well above the national average. The school’s Ofsted rating is Outstanding, a grade it has held since at least its 2016 graded inspection, and an ungraded visit in 2022 confirmed it remains at that standard. For a girls’ secondary in a diverse, urban setting, this performance is exceptional.

Digging into the exam data, the school’s Attainment 8 score sits at 52.6, and 71.4% of pupils achieved a grade 4 or above in both English and maths — the basics measure. The English Baccalaureate average point score is 4.93, with 68.3% of pupils entering the EBacc suite of subjects and 47.2% achieving a grade 4 or above across all five pillars. The Progress 8 breakdown shows strong, consistent gains across the board: English progress is 0.89, maths 0.69, the EBacc pillar 1.04, and open subjects 0.88. The confidence interval (0.71 to 1.12) suggests the school’s positive impact is statistically reliable. Compared with its previous Ofsted inspection in 2013, when it was rated Inadequate, the turnaround is dramatic — leadership and management, along with overall effectiveness, are now both rated Outstanding. The school does not have a sixth form, so all pupils sit GCSEs at 16.

Levenshulme High School is heavily oversubscribed: for 212 places in the 2025/26 intake, it received 576 applications, with 253 first-preference requests and 186 offers made to first-preference families — an oversubscription ratio of 2.72. The school’s facilities are notably strong for a state school, including a swimming pool, theatre, art studios, science labs, and a chapel. Sports provision covers netball, cricket, swimming, rowing, and dance, among others, and clubs range from Model UN and chess to gardening and a newspaper. SEND support is well-documented, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language challenges, hearing impairment, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. This is a school that suits families looking for high academic expectations in a diverse, urban girls’ environment, with strong pastoral and extracurricular breadth — but competition for places is fierce.

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