St Thomas the Apostle in Nunhead had Southwark's best grade 5+ English and maths rate in 2026, at 73.9%. How nine Dulwich, Peckham and Camberwell schools did.

St Thomas the Apostle College in Nunhead had the highest share of pupils passing English and maths at grade 5 or above of any state school in Southwark this summer. The figure was 73.9%.

The Charter School North Dulwich, on Red Post Hill, had the borough’s highest Attainment 8 score among state schools, at 62.5. Ark All Saints Academy in Camberwell made the biggest jump of any state school in the borough.

The figures come from the Department for Education’s provisional key stage 4 results for 2025/26, published on 15 October. We pulled every Southwark school from the department’s school-level data file and picked out the nine state secondaries in Dulwich, Peckham and Camberwell.

How each school did

Attainment 8 adds up a pupil’s grades across eight GCSE subjects, with English and maths counted twice. A score of 50 is roughly a grade 5 in each. The grade 5 column is the share of Year 11 pupils who got at least a 5, a “strong pass”, in both English and maths.

School Area Pupils Attainment 8 Grade 5+ English and maths 2025 grade 5+
St Thomas the Apostle College Nunhead 157 61.8 73.9% 72.0%
The Charter School North Dulwich Herne Hill (Red Post Hill) 179 62.5 72.1% 78.6%
Sacred Heart Catholic School Camberwell 137 57.4 70.1% 69.8%
Kingsdale Foundation School West Dulwich 431 56.9 62.4% 66.7%
The Charter School East Dulwich East Dulwich 174 55.3 60.3% 63.4%
Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich East Dulwich 137 54.0 56.9% 55.1%
Ark All Saints Academy Camberwell 113 52.1 55.8% 41.2%
Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich East Dulwich 136 51.3 55.1% 55.9%
Harris Academy Peckham Peckham 101 40.0 35.6% 35.3%

School addresses are from the government’s Get Information about Schools register.

Bar chart of the share of pupils with grade 5 or above in English and maths at GCSE in 2026: St Thomas the Apostle 73.9%, Charter North Dulwich 72.1%, Sacred Heart 70.1%, Kingsdale 62.4%, Charter East Dulwich 60.3%, Harris Boys' East Dulwich 56.9%, Ark All Saints 55.8%, Harris Girls' East Dulwich 55.1%, Harris Academy Peckham 35.6%, all Southwark state schools 55.1%, all England state schools 46.3%.
Chart by Dulwich Today. Source: Department for Education, key stage 4 performance 2025/26 (provisional).
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What changed from last year

Most local schools moved by only a few points. Three stand out.

  • Ark All Saints Academy rose from 41.2% to 55.8% on grade 5 English and maths, and from 45.2 to 52.1 on Attainment 8. Both are the largest rises of any Southwark state school in the data.
  • The Charter School North Dulwich fell from 78.6% to 72.1%, and from 65.0 to 62.5 on Attainment 8. It still has the highest Attainment 8 of any state school in the borough.
  • Kingsdale, the largest school locally with 431 pupils in the year, slipped from 66.7% to 62.4%.

Harris Academy Peckham stayed close to last year, at 35.6% against 35.3%. It had the smallest year group of the nine, at 101 pupils, down from 136.

The gates of St Thomas the Apostle College on Hollydale Road, Nunhead, with the school's name on the railings
St Thomas the Apostle College, Hollydale Road, Nunhead. Photo: Malc McDonald (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

How Southwark compares

Southwark’s state schools are well above the national picture. Across all state schools in the borough, 55.1% of pupils got grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 46.3% in England. The average Attainment 8 score was 51.4, against 46.2 nationally.

Counted by where pupils live rather than where they go to school, Southwark teenagers averaged 50.0. That puts the borough 51st of 297 council areas, from the department’s local authority district data. Lambeth’s residents averaged 47.9 and Lewisham’s 49.1.

What the figures do not show

  • Progress 8 is missing again. It measures how far pupils moved on from their primary school tests. Those tests were cancelled in 2021, so the department has not published it for 2025 or 2026.
  • The results are provisional. Schools can ask for corrections, and revised figures follow early next year.
  • Independent schools are left out here. The department lists Dulwich College, Alleyn’s and James Allen’s Girls’ School, but its measures do not count many of the international GCSEs those schools enter. Their scores are not comparable with the state schools above.

What it means for you

If your child is in Year 6, the deadline to apply for a secondary place for September 2027 is 11.59pm on Saturday 31 October 2026. Southwark’s key secondary admissions dates page has the timetable. Offers arrive by email after 5pm on Monday 1 March 2027.

One year’s results are a snapshot. Year groups at a single school vary, so look at two or three years together, and at the school’s latest Ofsted report. Our school term dates page has the holidays for the schools above.

Sources