As usual, the top of the lists are dominated by independent, fee-paying schools.

The best state school in terms of its GCSE performance was - again, no surprise - a girls' selective school: Townley Grammar School for Girls in Bexleyheath, Kent, where every candidate got at least a grade C. The national average is 46.3%.

"It's brilliant," said the headteacher, Linda Hutchinson - who is pleased that the proportion of A*, A and B grades has also increased.

The school takes in the top 25% of girls in its area academically.

"They are able and they work very hard and I have a hard working team of staff who give a lot of one-to-one support," she said.

She believes girls benefit from being in a single-sex school.

Supervised prep

"From the age of 14 upwards they are not reticent about coming forward, whereas in a mixed school that's not so obvious."

The country's top comprehensive, with its 98% rating for top grade GCSEs, is a rather unusual one - Old Swinford Hospital in Swindon, one of the few state boarding schools.

The headteacher, Chris Potter, attributes the success to an unashamedly academic ethos, backed up by supervised prep every evening - which he believes can be well emulated elsewhere in homework clubs.

One of the country's few city technology colleges - Thomas Telford School in Telford, Shropshire - achieved a GCSE score of 97%.

Another girls' school - The Hertfordshire and Essex High School, Bishop's Stortford, which is a grant maintained comprehensive - was near the top with 95% of its 15-year-olds getting top GCSE grades, even better than its performance last year, which was very good.

The headteacher, Sandra Buchanan, puts the improvement down to simple hard work on the part of pupils and staff.

"Our main aim is that individual pupils achieve their potential," she says.

The government is making much of its 'improvement measure' in this year's figures, showing how schools have done over the past few years to better their results.

Much improved

A case in point is Bacon's College in Southwark, London. Seven years ago, it was doing so badly it was facing closure.

Bacon's Deputy Principal, Tony Perry: "No magic wand"

Now another city technology college, it has exercised the freedom of having control of all the money allocated to it, running lessons outside normal school hours, and has one of the best improvement records: some 46% of pupils there achieved five GCSE grades above grade C, up from 7% in 1992.

The principal, Clive Grimwood, said: "When results here first began to improve, you could feel the children here grow taller.

Tony Perry: "Wonderful resources and hard-working, committed staff"

"Things were happening that were only supposed to happen to other people, and the children and the wider community were very proud of it."

Down at the bottom of the GCSE tables is Middleton Park High School, Leeds, where no pupils managed a grade C. The school has been officially declared "failing" and local parents are fighting Leeds education authority plans to close it.

It has had six headteachers in 10 years. The present head, seconded from a neighbouring school, Colin Richardson, says the league table ranking will be devastating.

"The pupils will feel bitter. They will ask what is wrong with them," he said.

"This school has made enormous strides since we were declared failing, but today's league tables don't show that at all."

Over 16

At A level, fee-paying and selective schools dominate the lists, with the Gyosei International School UK, Milton Keynes, at the top with 9.8 points.

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, a selective grant maintained school, is the top non-independent with 8.3 points.

As might be expected, state institutions dominate the Advanced GNVQ lists. Fifty-five of them achieved 18 points.

Bucks waves flag for selection

The best-performing local education authority for the third year running is the Isles of Scilly - which has only one state secondary school: the Isles of Scilly County Secondary, 66.7% of whose pupils got top GCSE grades.

The best mainland local education authority (LEA) in England is Conservative-controlled Buckinghamshire, averaging 59.5% - one of the few areas which maintains a totally selective system.

The leader of the Conservative group on the county council, Cllr Mark Greenburgh, said it is not only the performance of the county's grammar schools which is impressive, and argues that selection - be it by school or within schools, through streaming - benefits all pupils, allowing them to work at their own pace.

Cllr Greenburgh recognises a potential threat to the system from the government's change in regulations, to allow groups of parents to petition for a ballot on the future of selection.

'Could do better'

"I'm not frightened of a ballot," he said. "If they could collect the signatures to challenge the whole area system I'm confident that the voters of Buckinghamshire would back the existing system because it works.

"If it ain't broke...."

At the bottom of the LEA table is Kingston upon Hull, with an average of A*-C grades of 22.8%. Its two best-performing schools had results just above the national average, the rest were below.

The head of Kingston upon Hull's education committee, Mima Bell, said: "What has pleased me is that we have fewer youngsters now leaving school with no qualifications.

"Only two years ago the number of pupils leaving Kingston upon Hull schools with nothing to show for 11 years of schooling was three times the national average. Now the number of pupils achieving at least one GCSE has risen by almost 5% and we are in line with national expectations."

Hull's Assistant Director of Education, Eric Reid, said the authority had only been in existence since 1996 and had had a lot of work to do.

Strategies were in place to raise standards and that was working well in primary schools, but was proving to be a harder task at secondary level.

Not there, not learning

Hull also had the worst truancy records among the 150 LEAs in England, sharing the title with the City of Nottingham. South Tyneside had the best record.

But the individual school with the poorest showing is Breckfield Community Comprehensive School in Liverpool, measured on the number of half days missed through unauthorised absence.

The temporary headteacher, John Toye, said the school had taken in an extra 68 children in the past year, many of them confirmed truants.

"We have negotiated with the LEA not to keep sending those children here," he said. "About 10 of the new pupils had been excluded elsewhere."

He said that the school was now targeting persistent truants aged between 11 and 13, to integrate them gradually back into classes.

• To comment in BBC Education's discussion forum on this or other items click here