BURY has been highlighted by the Government for its rising education standards following the publication of this year's secondary school 'league tables'.

The department for education (DfE) has released its performance tables detailing the GCSE results of every school in the country.

More pupils in Bury achieved all the five subjects — English, maths, science, humanities and a modern foreign language — of the English Baccalaureate, including a grade 5 or above, than the national average.

In Bury more than one in five children achieved the benchmark 'qualification' — and the numbers achieving five or more A* to C 9-4 GCSEs or equivalent including maths and English was above the national average.

A total of 61.1 per cent of children left with five or more good qualifications compared 56.6 per cent nationally.

The best performing state-school, measured by the percentage of pupils who left schools with five or more good grades, was St Gabriel’s RC High School, where 73 per cent of pupils achieved the ‘passport’ grades.

Acting headteacher of St Gabriel's RC High School Adam Loster said: "As a distinctive Catholic school, we are very proud of our students of the class of 2017, who achieved record English and maths results, and overall passes.

"This is testament to the excellent teaching and support of our parents, carers and governors. The community of St. Gabriel’s is thrilled and delighted with these outcomes."

Elton High School and The Derby School were top of the table for the progress their pupils make during their years at secondary school. Children their made above average progress.

Pupils at St Philips in Whitefield also made above average progress.

Elton High School headteacher Jonathan Wilton said: "It gives a great boost to our whole school community to see the government league tables confirm what we see every day: that this is a great school where young people thrive.

"We have fantastic students and they are very well served by their supportive parents and talented teachers, who work hard to enable every child to achieve their full potential.

"Of course, league tables can only show the figures for academic attainment. We are also proud of our focus on developing resilient and articulate learners, who have the skills to succeed in life as well as superb qualifications."

Although overall Bury’s results were above average or in line with, the progress children made from leaving primary school to leaving secondary school was deemed to be ‘below average’.

Pupils at Woodhey High School, Bury CE High School, St Monica’s RC High School, Tottington High School and Prestwich Arts College made below average progress.

Manchester Mesivta School, which in recent years has been named as one of the borough's top performing schools has stressed the figure do not accurately reflects the 'high' standards reached by its pupils.

According to the figures children in two schools made ‘well below average’ progress.

Broadoak High School in Bury and Manchester Mesivta School in Prestwich were on the list of the 365 state-funded mainstream secondary schools in England which did not meet the Government’s floor standards for performance in 2017.

Schools fall below the Government’s performance threshold if pupils fail to make enough progress across eight subjects, with particular weight given to English and maths.

Senior leaders at Manchester Mesivta School stress that standards have not fallen, but the school has been penalised because their pupils are bright enough to have taken their GCSE exams a year earlier, when maths and English were graded at A* to C and not as was the case in 2017, 9-1. The Government has only counted the 9-1 grades for the two core subjects.

Rabbi Binyomin Sulzbacher, Principal of Manchester Mesivta High School said: "The DfE 2017 Progress 8 and Attainment 8 results are not a true reflection of our pupils’ actual achievements.

"The majority of pupils at our school sit most of their GCSE’s at the end of Year 10, which is an academic year earlier. As this year’s League Tables do not take into account A-C grades of English and Maths, the majority of our pupils’ English and Maths grades were omitted from the League Tables. "Consequently the school has been disadvantaged as its Progress 8 score is significantly lower than if these subjects were included."

The school states its Progress 8 score last year placed it in the top five per cent of schools nationally and the top achieving state school within Bury.

The school also received a congratulatory letter from Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, for the progress children make.

Results show that when the English and maths grades are converted to the new measure, 92 per cent of pupils achieved a grade 4 or above in the two subjects, with 81 per cent making the expected progress and 51 per cent exceeding the expected progress

Rabbi Sulzbacher said:"The school does not have the systems available to accurately provide our own Progress 8 or Attainment 8 figures but an approximate calculation would place the school as the strongest performing maintained school in Bury once again.

"The school became aware last year that this would be an issue and were kindly assisted by Bury Local Education Authority who engaged with the DfE and Ofsted. Once the consultations between the LEA and DfE were completed it was the schools understanding that a solution had been reached and our “actual” results would be reflected in the revised League Tables in January. Unfortunately this did not happen. We are engaging further with the DfE to seek their proposed solution to the inaccurate information currently reflected by the league tables as the current tables are – understandably – upsetting to the school’s pupils whose hard work and excellent results one year early is not being recognised."

No one from Broadoak High School was available for comment.