Flagship colleges break dominance of grammar pupils in league tables

A growing number of special-ist schools are beginning to challenge the remaining grammar schools for top slots in the GCSE exams league tables.

Three of the Government's City Technology Colleges achieved results which would have put them in the top 100 of selective schools, according to results compiled by The Independent.

The top performer was Thomas Telford school, which not only became the only comprehensive to get all of its GCSE candidates to obtain five A* to C grade passes but also scored the highest marks per candidate of any school in the country. Its success will cheer ministers because it is a model of good practice for struggling neighbouring comprehensives, an idea to be promoted by Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, for the coming term.

Two schools already send their pupils to the college in Telford, Shropshire, for one day a week. One of them, Langley Park in Solihull, which was on a list of schools with "serious weaknesses" compiled by the Government watchdog Ofsted, has already seen a dramatic improvement in its exam results. The number of its pupils gaining give top grade passes has more than doubled, from 19 per cent to 42 per cent.

Brooke Weston City Technology College (CTC) in Corby, Northamptonshire, and the controversial Emmanuel CTC in Gateshead, which was accused of teaching its pupils creationism in science lessons, are the others to have broken into the hallowed ground of the grammar schools' league table. In all, five comprehensive schools would make a combined top 100.

It is more difficult for a non-selective school to break through at GCSE level because the exam is taken by pupils of all ability whereas pupils can quit education before A-levels.

Staff at Brooke Weston CTC were particularly pleased yesterday that their girls and boys performed equally well, despite the nine per cent lead in the number of top grade passes achieved by girls nationally.

Peter Simpson, the school's principal, said: "This is an outstanding set of results. I am delighted that all the hard work of our students has been so worthwhile."

Despite the fact that CTCs first appeared in a paper by the right-wing policy group, the Centre for Policy Studies, and were introduced by the Conservatives in 1989, when Kenneth Baker was Margaret Thatcher's Education Secretary, Labour will take heart from their results.

The Government's flagship City Academies are based on the CTC model – with sponsorship from industry boosting theirfunding.

Labour sees its City Academy strategy as particularly important in solving its problems with education in London, where up to 30 per cent of parents in some boroughs are voting with their feet and opting for private education.

A strategy for improving standards in the capital's schools to be published next month is expected to recommend establishing at least 25 City Academies in London's inner city areas.

However, teachers' leaders argue that this year's results show that if all schools were to be given the same level of funding they would be able to show similar successes. They say that vast sums of extra finance were poured into the CTC's at the expense of other schools.

This year's tables show a slight fall in the number of grammar schools getting all their pupils to obtain at least five top grade passes. There are 44 this year compared with 51 last year.

The top performing grammar school was Henrietta Barnett in Barnet, north London. It achieved a point score per pupil of 79, which is the equivalent of almost ten A* grade passes for every pupil.