Areas with the most Outstanding secondary schools
Ranked on the number of secondary schools rated Outstanding. This is a different question from school quality overall: an area can be full of Outstanding primaries and have no secondary school at all, which is exactly the thing a family with an eleven-year-old needs to know.
SL1 (Slough) tops the list on 4, with SK8 (Cheadle) at number 50 on 2. 1,533 postcode areas met the thresholds for this ranking.
| # | Area | Outstanding secondaries | Avg price | Crime /1k | Schools Good+ | Liveability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SL1 Slough | 4 | £459,092 | 129.4 | 95.8% | 80/100 |
| 2 | PR1 Preston | 4 | £189,059 | 170.9 | 87.9% | 79/100 |
| 3 | AL4 St. Albans | 3 | £637,981 | 62.0 | 100.0% | 87/100 |
| 4 | AL5 Harpenden | 3 | £860,421 | 48.9 | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 5 | CM23 Bishop's Stortford | 3 | £486,102 | 80.0 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 6 | E7 London | 3 | £481,670 | 118.0 | 100.0% | 85/100 |
| 7 | HA9 Wembley | 3 | £779,503 | 151.9 | 100.0% | 74/100 |
| 8 | N12 London | 3 | £625,195 | 92.5 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 9 | SL3 Slough | 3 | £591,168 | 87.3 | 100.0% | 79/100 |
| 10 | SS0 Westcliff-on-Sea | 3 | £298,299 | 111.3 | 100.0% | 85/100 |
| 11 | SW6 London | 3 | £1,206,926 | 102.2 | 100.0% | 82/100 |
| 12 | WA14 Altrincham | 3 | £496,787 | — | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 13 | E1 London | 3 | £1,038,792 | 195.1 | 96.2% | 72/100 |
| 14 | NG8 Nottingham | 3 | £227,180 | 97.8 | 96.2% | 86/100 |
| 15 | CM1 Chelmsford | 3 | £439,445 | 105.7 | 96.0% | 82/100 |
| 16 | W3 London | 3 | £730,398 | 134.0 | 93.3% | 82/100 |
| 17 | HA3 Harrow | 3 | £509,462 | 79.5 | 92.3% | 87/100 |
| 18 | HP21 Aylesbury | 3 | £317,473 | 79.3 | 81.3% | 82/100 |
| 19 | TN4 Tunbridge Wells | 3 | £494,511 | 56.4 | 76.9% | 82/100 |
| 20 | BD3 Bradford | 2 | £134,094 | 138.9 | 100.0% | 80/100 |
| 21 | BH10 Bournemouth | 2 | £303,548 | 70.5 | 100.0% | 84/100 |
| 22 | BH8 Bournemouth | 2 | £322,815 | 99.3 | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 23 | BR3 Beckenham | 2 | £564,145 | 86.7 | 100.0% | 88/100 |
| 24 | BR6 Orpington | 2 | £582,556 | 71.7 | 100.0% | 87/100 |
| 25 | DA1 Dartford | 2 | £355,569 | 107.6 | 100.0% | 82/100 |
| 26 | EN5 Barnet | 2 | £657,580 | 85.3 | 100.0% | 80/100 |
| 27 | GL51 Cheltenham | 2 | £316,712 | — | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 28 | HA5 Pinner | 2 | £645,326 | 62.3 | 100.0% | 85/100 |
| 29 | IG11 Barking | 2 | £445,031 | 148.9 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 30 | IG2 Ilford | 2 | £450,811 | 82.4 | 100.0% | 81/100 |
| 31 | KT2 Kingston upon Thames | 2 | £831,632 | 66.9 | 100.0% | 79/100 |
| 32 | LS29 Ilkley | 2 | £416,578 | 44.1 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 33 | LU4 Luton | 2 | £369,006 | 72.3 | 100.0% | 80/100 |
| 34 | M19 Manchester | 2 | £220,069 | — | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 35 | ME14 Maidstone | 2 | £376,612 | 119.5 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 36 | N1 London | 2 | £945,654 | 173.5 | 100.0% | 87/100 |
| 37 | NE25 Whitley Bay | 2 | £233,983 | 59.4 | 100.0% | 84/100 |
| 38 | NG2 Nottingham | 2 | £321,151 | 114.8 | 100.0% | 84/100 |
| 39 | RM14 Upminster | 2 | £562,070 | 59.5 | 100.0% | 83/100 |
| 40 | SE16 London | 2 | £610,615 | 115.0 | 100.0% | 82/100 |
| 41 | SM6 Wallington | 2 | £431,784 | 82.8 | 100.0% | 80/100 |
| 42 | SW19 London | 2 | £908,554 | 78.8 | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 43 | TW1 Twickenham | 2 | £911,008 | 80.5 | 100.0% | 82/100 |
| 44 | TW3 Hounslow | 2 | £465,948 | 158.8 | 100.0% | 89/100 |
| 45 | UB6 Greenford | 2 | £585,246 | 100.6 | 100.0% | 81/100 |
| 46 | W7 London | 2 | £556,315 | 88.5 | 100.0% | 87/100 |
| 47 | W9 London | 2 | £918,739 | 135.6 | 100.0% | 86/100 |
| 48 | WD18 Watford | 2 | £448,409 | 149.1 | 100.0% | 85/100 |
| 49 | BB2 Blackburn | 2 | £189,645 | 130.2 | 97.1% | 85/100 |
| 50 | SK8 Cheadle | 2 | £353,954 | — | 95.8% | 82/100 |
How this ranking is built
Every figure is calculated from official data by postcode area — the outward code, the part of a postcode before the space. Sold prices are what buyers actually paid, as registered with HM Land Registry. Crime is street-level police data matched to postcode areas through the neighbourhoods inside them. School ratings are current Ofsted grades across 26,824 schools. Population, tenure and household figures come from the 2021 Census.
Areas with too few sales or residents to rank meaningfully are excluded, as are non-residential ones — business parks, airports and single-company campuses have sold prices but nobody lives in them. Where a figure is unknown the area is left out of that ranking rather than counted as zero.