Renfrewshire Schools Post Their Best Higher Results in Years

Gryffe High School in Houston posted Renfrewshire’s best Higher pass rate this year, with 68% of pupils gaining five or more Highers. That qualification is Scotland’s “gold standard” for university and college entry. The result puts Gryffe 21st out of every secondary school in the country.

Eleven Renfrewshire secondary schools made Scotland’s list of top performers in the 2025 results, built from exam data the Scottish Government published after last summer’s results day. The improvement lands in the same year the Scottish Government once promised its poverty-related attainment gap would shrink significantly. Nationally, that gap barely moved.

Gryffe High Clears Two Thirds of Its Senior Phase

Four Renfrewshire schools separated from the rest in the 2025 results. Behind Gryffe, Trinity High School in Renfrew reached 60% of pupils earning five Highers, good for 34th nationally. Park Mains High School in Erskine hit 50%, ranking 67th. St Benedict’s High School in Linwood recorded 49% and finished 74th.

Nationally, 75.9% of all Higher entries earned an A to C pass in 2025, up from 74.9% the year before. Gryffe’s figure measures something tougher than a single subject grade: five or more full Higher passes in one sitting. The Scottish Government’s full table lists all 11 Renfrewshire schools; this piece follows the four that led the pack.

Why Four Schools Don’t Make a League Table

Because raw percentages hide everything that makes one school’s job harder than another’s. Deprivation levels, additional support needs, staffing and funding all shape a result before a single exam is sat, and the government’s own statisticians say as much about this exact data.

Official guidance warns against reading these tables the way fans read a football division table. Ranking schools head to head ignores the very different circumstances each one works within, and statisticians prefer comparing a school to its own matched peer group rather than the national list.

A handful of factors never show up in a bare percentage:

• Support available for pupils with additional or complex needs
• The effort of teaching staff and the conditions they work under
• The overall quality of a pupil’s day to day school experience
• How much funding a school receives from Renfrewshire Council
• Whether a school serves a deprived or disadvantaged catchment area

The same caution applied when a separate exercise once highlighted eighteen of Scotland’s best performing schools nationally, and it applies just as much to this year’s list.

A Record Year Nationally, a Gap Stuck at 17 Points

Scotland’s exam body called 2025 a landmark year for Scotland’s learners. Higher entries topped 200,000 for the first time since Curriculum for Excellence exams began in 2014, and vocational awards passed 100,000 for the first time too.

The poverty-related attainment gap told a flatter story. At Higher level, the gap between pupils from the wealthiest and most deprived backgrounds closed by just 0.1 percentage points, moving from 17.2% to 17.1%.

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister at the time, pledged in 2015 that closing the gap would be a “yardstick by which the people of Scotland can measure our success.” Her government’s 2016 Programme for Government promised the disparity would be reduced significantly by 2026, this year. Miles Briggs, the Scottish Conservative’s shadow education secretary, said “no amount of spin” could disguise the failure to close it.

Trinity’s Climb From 99th to 34th

A year earlier, using 2024 exam results, Trinity’s pass rate stood at 39%, ranking 99th nationally. This year’s 60% and 34th place mark a jump of 21 percentage points and 65 places in the national table in a single year.

Park Mains climbed too. It went from 44% and 90th in 2024 to 50% and 67th now, a gain of six points and 23 places.

1. 2015: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledges that closing the attainment gap will be a measure of her government’s success.
2. 2016: The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government promises the poverty-related gap will be reduced significantly by 2026.
3. 2024: Trinity High records a 39% Higher pass rate and ranks 99th in Scotland; Park Mains records 44% and ranks 90th.
4. August 2025: SQA results day arrives. The national Higher pass rate rises to 75.9%, while the attainment gap narrows by just 0.1 percentage points.
5. December 2025: The SQA hands its qualifications functions to the newly formed Qualifications Scotland.

Council Money Is Already Chasing These Results

Renfrewshire is not affluent from end to end. One quarter of its 225 data zones rank among Scotland’s most deprived 20% on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), according to the council’s own education standards report from September 2025.

The council is already spending against that backdrop. Park Mains is getting a physical extension and redesign due to finish in August 2027. Trinity High is one of the priority schools now moving through a four-stage business case process for further investment, alongside Johnstone High and seven primary schools.

We are making major investment which will transform Renfrewshire’s schools for our pupils, staff and communities.

Councillor Emma Rodden, convener of Renfrewshire Council’s Education and Children’s Services Policy Board, said that of the wider building programme now under way.

Elsewhere in Scotland, the investment maths runs the other way. Questions over a small rural secondary school’s uncertain future show how differently that calculation can play out when a school’s roll is too small to make the same case.

Qualifications Scotland Takes Over From the SQA

The exam body behind all of this data will not exist in its current form much longer. The SQA handed its qualifications and awarding functions to the newly created Qualifications Scotland in December 2025.

Qualifications Scotland publishes its first results next August. Renfrewshire will learn then whether this year’s gains were the start of a trend or a single good year.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Counts as Five Highers or More?

It means a pupil left the senior phase with at least five awards at Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) level 6. That includes Highers themselves plus equivalent qualifications, such as Skills for Work Higher awards. It is the level Scottish universities typically ask for when setting entry conditions for degree courses.

How Does Scotland Measure the Poverty-Related Attainment Gap?

Officials sort neighbourhoods into five SIMD bands, from the most to least deprived 20%, then compare outcomes for pupils living in each. Nationally, just over two in five young people from the most deprived areas leave school with at least one Higher, compared with almost four in five from the least deprived areas.

How Many Pupils Sat National Qualifications in 2025?

Higher entries passed 200,000 for the first time this year. National 5 remains the biggest exam by far, with just over 333,000 entries, while 28,610 pupils sat Advanced Higher courses.

Does a High Ranking Mean Other Schools Are Struggling?

A lower position on this list mostly reflects a school’s circumstances rather than the effort of its staff or pupils. Renfrewshire Council directs Pupil Equity Funding, additional money aimed squarely at closing gaps linked to poverty, and schools serving more deprived catchments generally receive more of it.

What Happens to Pupils Who Do Not Reach Five Highers?

Most still move on to something worthwhile. Scottish Government figures show 95.7% of all school leavers reached a positive destination nationally, covering further study, training, employment or volunteering, regardless of how many Highers they left with.