School league table 2025: How Tayside, Fife & Stirling schools rank
A Fife school has made huge gains to reach the top two in The Courier's secondary schools league of 2025.
Dunfermline High School was surpassed only by Dunblane High School in our ranking of 52 schools in Angus, Dundee, Fife, Perth and Kinross and Stirling.
Schools are ranked on the percentage of leavers with five or more Higher qualifications (or equivalent).
An impressive 60% of pupils to leave Dunfermline High in 2023/24 have five or more Highers (or equivalent) compared to 43% the year before.
The best performing schools in each local authority area are:
Dunblane retained the top spot in The Courier secondary schools league. It also recorded an increase in leavers with five or more Highers to 70%, compared to 62% the year before.
Impressive rises were also seen at The Community School of Auchterarder, up 23 to 58%.
Blairgowrie High School's percentage rose 10 to 37%.
But there were significant decreases at Woodmill High School, Dunfermline, down 13 to 37%, and St John's RC Academy, Perth, down 16 to 32%.
Bertha Park High School, also in Perth, is included in our table for the first time, as it had an S6 cohort for the first time in 2023/24. And 32% of its leavers gained five or more Highers.
Five or more Highers is considered a benchmark of achievement as it is a common entry requirement for university.
You can find out how your school performed below, in our table of Angus, Dundee, Fife, Perth and Kinross and Stirling local authority secondary schools.
Each year the Scottish Government publishes attainment data for every school in Scotland.
The figures our 2025 school league table is based on are the percentages of leavers to achieve five or more qualifications at SCQF level 6.
As well as Highers, this can include qualifications such as a National Certificate or Modern Apprenticeship.
Publication of school league tables is controversial, seen by many as an index of deprivation rather than a measure of individual schools' performance.
An attainment gap exists between pupils who live in the most and least affluent areas.
Indeed, in our top nine schools of 2025 fewer than one in 10 pupils live in the most deprived areas (designated quintile one in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation).
At the three worst performing schools more than half of pupils are from the most deprived areas.
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