Watford Grammar School for Boys came 2nd of 79 Herts state secondaries. The Grange and Westfield made the biggest gains. All 14 local schools ranked.

Watford Grammar School for Boys had the second best GCSE results of any state secondary in Hertfordshire this summer. Only Dame Alice Owen’s School in Potters Bar did better, out of 79 schools.

The figures are the Department for Education’s provisional key stage 4 results for 2025/26, published on 15 October. They are the first official school-by-school numbers for this summer’s exams. We have taken out every state secondary in Watford and the schools nearby that Watford families most often apply to.

The biggest story further down the table is improvement. The Grange Academy in Bushey and Westfield Academy in Watford both made large gains on last year.

The table

Schools are ranked by Attainment 8, the government’s average score across a pupil’s best eight GCSEs. “Grade 5+” is the share of pupils with grade 5 or above in both English and maths, often called a strong pass. The Herts rank is out of 79 state secondaries in the county, not counting special schools.

Herts rank School Where Pupils Attainment 8 Grade 5+ 2026 Grade 5+ 2025
2 Watford Grammar School for Boys Watford 224 66.3 84.4% 83.3%
5 Watford Grammar School for Girls Watford 211 65.5 79.6% 83.2%
6 Parmiter’s School Garston, Three Rivers 206 65.0 77.7% 80.8%
7 St Clement Danes School Chorleywood, Three Rivers 239 64.0 82.0% 83.9%
9 Rickmansworth School Rickmansworth, Three Rivers 269 63.7 79.2% 80.5%
21 Queens’ School Bushey, Hertsmere 268 56.2 66.0% 67.8%
34 Croxley Danes School Croxley Green, Three Rivers 175 51.6 61.1% 50.0%
37 Saint Joan of Arc Catholic School Rickmansworth, Three Rivers 205 50.6 52.7% 56.1%
43 Saint Michael’s Catholic High School Garston, Three Rivers 180 48.8 43.3% 50.0%
45 The Grange Academy Bushey, Hertsmere 157 48.2 50.3% 32.2%
54 Westfield Academy Watford 243 45.5 46.9% 38.5%
57 The Reach Free School Rickmansworth, Three Rivers 114 44.7 29.8% 35.3%
65 Future Academies Watford Watford 195 42.6 40.0% 32.1%
66 Bushey Meads School Bushey, Hertsmere 187 42.5 43.3% 41.0%

Four of the schools are in Watford borough. Parmiter’s and Saint Michael’s have Watford addresses in Garston but sit just over the boundary in Three Rivers. Bushey is about two miles south-east of the town centre, Croxley Green about two miles west and Rickmansworth about four miles west. The school list and locations come from the government’s Get Information about Schools register.

The England average for state schools was 46.2 for Attainment 8 and 46.3% for grade 5+ in English and maths.

Horizontal bar chart of the share of pupils with grade 5 or above in English and maths at 14 state secondaries in and around Watford in 2026. Watford Grammar School for Boys is highest at 84.4 per cent and The Reach Free School lowest at 29.8 per cent, against an England average of 46.3 per cent
Chart by Watford Today. Source: Department for Education, provisional 2025/26 results.
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The biggest gains

Measured by the share of pupils with grade 5+ in English and maths, four schools improved by more than seven percentage points:

  • The Grange Academy, up 18.1 points, from 32.2% to 50.3%. Its Attainment 8 rose from 41.3 to 48.2.
  • Croxley Danes School, up 11.1 points, from 50.0% to 61.1%.
  • Westfield Academy, up 8.4 points, from 38.5% to 46.9%, now above the England average.
  • Future Academies Watford, up 7.9 points, from 32.1% to 40.0%.

Westfield’s rise has run for two years. In 2024 only 24.9% of its pupils got grade 5+ in English and maths. That has nearly doubled, and the school entered 243 pupils this year against 195 last year.

The biggest falls

Five schools fell by three points or more on the same measure:

  • Saint Michael’s Catholic High School, down 6.7 points to 43.3%
  • The Reach Free School, down 5.5 points to 29.8%
  • Watford Grammar School for Girls, down 3.6 points to 79.6%
  • Saint Joan of Arc Catholic School, down 3.4 points to 52.7%
  • Parmiter’s School, down 3.1 points to 77.7%

The two grammar schools and Parmiter’s are still well inside the county’s top ten. Year groups of around 200 pupils can move a few points from one summer to the next without anything changing in the school.

How Watford’s own pupils did

The DfE also publishes results by where pupils live, whichever school they go to. The 1,323 Watford borough residents who sat GCSEs averaged 51.5 for Attainment 8. Of them, 55.8% got grade 5+ in English and maths, against 54.1% last year.

That puts Watford pupils 34th of 297 council districts in England. In Hertfordshire, St Albans was 3rd, Three Rivers 18th, East Hertfordshire 27th and Hertsmere 32nd. The figures are in the DfE’s local authority district data for the same release.

Two things these figures do not show

There is no Progress 8 score this year. Progress 8 compares pupils’ GCSEs with their results at the end of primary school. This year group sat no key stage 2 tests, because they were cancelled during the pandemic, so the DfE has not published it. That matters, because raw results favour schools whose pupils arrive with high grades.

These are provisional. Schools can still check and correct their data. The DfE lists its next key stage 4 release for February 2027.

What it means for you

If you are choosing a secondary school for September 2027, the closing date for Hertfordshire applications is 31 October. Results are one measure. Look also at Ofsted reports, the distance a school actually admitted from last year, and how it does with children like yours. Our GCSE results day report has what the schools themselves published in August.

If your child is at Westfield, The Grange, Croxley Danes or Future Academies Watford, this year’s results are a clear step up on last year’s.

Sources