Independent rankings of Middle schools in Pinellas County with IB (International Baccalaureate) programs, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
Not sure which fits your child? Take the 2-minute match quiz.
Get your top 5 matches — ranked by grades, budget, location, and your child's strengths.
Looking for the best middle schools in Pinellas County? We track 12 K-12 options that serve middle grades. Annual tuition ranges from $7.2K/yr to $29K/yr, with a median of $10.6K/yr across schools that publish a number. St. Petersburg has the highest concentration with 3 schools, followed by Saint Petersburg (3). 9 of these schools accept Florida Step Up / FES scholarships — roughly 75% of the list — so families using state-funded scholarships have real choice here.
Middle-school admission is the most competitive transition point at many independent schools. Expect a standardized test (ISEE, SSAT, or in-house), a writing sample, and teacher recommendations from 4th or 5th grade. Every school is re-verified through direct outreach to admissions teams; data is refreshed on a 180-day cadence and timestamped on each profile.
See also: Learning Support, Gifted, Language Immersion.
We rank by how well each school fits your family — academics, cost, distance, and values. Never by size, popularity, or payment (schools can’t pay for rank). The coarse admission-likelihood band is always free.
St. Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades PK-12·~900 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Clearwater·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~603 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Safety Harbor·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~466 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Tarpon Springs·Pinellas County·Grades KG-08·~133 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
St. Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades KG-12·~85 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
St Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades KG-09·~48 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Saint Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~306 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Saint Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~219 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
St Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades PK-12·~326 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
St. Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades KG-12·~65 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Built relationships, not scrapers. AdmitCompass ranks schools using a composite score that blends four signals: enrollment size (a proxy for stability and program breadth), tuition reasonableness within the local market, freshness of our most recent verification, and a small bonus for schools with full admissions detail published on their profile.
Public data comes from the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and each school's own admissions pages. The information that actually matters to most families — acceptance rates, deadlines, what a director cares about — comes from direct interviews with school directors and admissions coaches across our active markets.
We do not publish scoring weights or per-axis thresholds. That keeps the moat intact: the rankings reflect actual conversations with people inside schools, not a formula anyone with a crawler could clone. Every profile is re-verified on a 180-day cadence, and the "last updated" date is timestamped on every school page.
Combine filters to get a tighter shortlist.
Adjacent searches families often run from here.
Our 2-minute quiz factors in grades, budget, location, and goals to surface the best-fit schools from this list.