Buckinghamshire top at GCSE

Highest and lowest scores have risen since last year

Buckinghamshire has returned to the top place among local education authorities in this year's GCSE results.

The authority, which still maintains a grammar school system, has the highest proportion of pupils scoring five or more good GCSEs.

Buckingham's overall score was 70.8% - seven percentage points higher than last year's top rating authority, Sutton.

Both the highest and the lowest authorities have increased compared with last year's results.

Click here for a table of LEA results

Click here for the main school tables

But there has been little progress in reducing the number of pupils leaving without any GCSEs, with some authorities getting worse.

The proportion of pupils in Manchester without any GCSEs almost doubled, up from 7.3% to 13.6%.

And in truancy rates, the 10 bottom ranked authorities all have worse figures than last year.

Last year - excluding the Scilly Isles which only has one secondary school - Buckinghamshire was in third place, having slipped from the top ranking position in 1999.

New entries

The list of top 10 authorities also includes two new entries - Gloucestershire and Surrey, replacing Bromley and Rutland - with the other eight leading authorities shuffling places.

Local authority GCSE results

Highest score: Bucks

Lowest score: Knowsley

Highest with at least one GCSE: Redbridge

Most likely to have no GCSEs: Manchester

Highest truancy rate: Knowsley

Lowest truancy rate: Cornwall

Bromley is among the authorities that has slipped down the tables - with a lower points score taking them from eighth place last year to 23rd this year.

At the bottom end of the table there are many similarities with last year's results, with Knowsley, Kingston upon Hull and Islington taking the lowest three places once again.

But this year's lowest scoring authority, Knowsley, with 27%, was three percentage points above last year's lowest.

In an attempt to improve standards, the authority is to set up a schools commission to advise councillors.

Greenwich and Hackney both slipped into the bottom 10 boroughs this year, replacing Sandwell and Lambeth, who have climbed upwards.

Strong performers

The local authority performance tables, as in previous years, reveal regional patterns of high-flyers and underachievement.

Authorities in outer London and the Home Counties have continued to perform strongly - Buckinghamshire, Redbridge, Sutton, Surrey, Kingston upon Thames, Windsor and Maidenhead and Harrow all appear in the top 20.

Among the lowest performing, there is a concentration of inner-city authorities, spread across London, Merseyside, the Midlands and the North East.

Islington, where a private company now runs schools, had a larger proportion of pupils leaving without GCSEs than last year - up from 8.3% to 11.4%.

Above the classically-deprived inner-city councils, but below the average, come a swathe of urban authorities, such as Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Southampton.

Above average

Above the average - now standing at 50% - but below the highest performers, are a number of the more affluent counties and more successful London boroughs, such as Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Camden and Richmond.

But this pattern has many exceptions. The City of Plymouth has scored higher than Oxfordshire, Stockport is higher than Worcestershire.

While south-west London is a high-scoring region, Wandsworth remains below the average, scoring less well than authorities such as Brent, Kirklees and Wigan.

Westminster is even lower down the table, only just above Newham and South Tyneside - and it has one of the highest truancy rates in the country.

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The table below shows local education authorities in England ranked by the performance of their pupils in the 2001 GCSE/GNVQ exams.

It shows the percentages getting five or more good GCSEs or GNVQ equivalents, and the percentages getting no passes at any level.

Click the name of any LEA to go to its pages in the main tables.

LEA	5+	0
Isles of Scilly	70.8%	0.0%
Buckinghamshire	63.3%	4.5%
Redbridge	63.0%	2.1%
Wokingham	61.3%	4.0%
Kingston upon Thames	61.1%	6.2%
Sutton	60.2%	4.0%
Windsor and Maidenhead	58.8%	4.5%
Poole	58.5%	2.7%
Gloucestershire	58.3%	2.7%
North Yorkshire	58.3%	3.0%
Surrey	58.2%	4.5%
Trafford	57.7%	3.7%
Harrow	57.5%	3.3%
Rutland	57.2%	2.0%
Bath and NE Somerset	56.4%	3.9%
Dorset	56.4%	4.3%
Hertfordshire	56.3%	4.4%
West Berkshire	56.1%	3.1%
Solihull	55.9%	3.3%
Cheshire	55.8%	3.2%
Barnet	55.8%	4.8%
Southend	55.8%	5.1%
Havering	55.7%	3.7%
Bromley	55.5%	3.7%
Wiltshire	55.4%	4.3%
Kensington and Chelsea	55.3%	3.8%
West Sussex	55.0%	3.6%
Hampshire	54.9%	3.3%
Somerset	54.6%	2.8%
Suffolk	54.3%	3.3%
Bury	54.2%	1.8%
City of York	54.2%	4.2%
Stockport	54.2%	4.9%
Lincolnshire	54.1%	3.9%
Shropshire	53.8%	3.3%
Richmond upon Thames	53.8%	5.9%
Cambridgeshire	53.6%	5.2%
Herefordshire	53.5%	5.1%
Cornwall	53.3%	3.8%
Slough	52.4%	2.8%
Kent	52.4%	4.4%
Essex	52.0%	4.2%
Torbay	51.7%	5.4%
Bournemouth	51.6%	5.8%
Derbyshire	51.5%	3.8%
Devon	51.3%	4.3%
Hammersmith and Fulham	51.1%	3.9%
North Somerset	50.8%	4.1%
Cumbria	50.8%	4.4%
Warwickshire	50.5%	4.4%
Wirral	50.5%	5.0%
Warrington	50.3%	4.5%
City of Plymouth	50.3%	4.5%
Camden	50.2%	4.1%
East Riding of Yorkshire	50.1%	4.9%
Lancashire	50.1%	4.2%
East Sussex	50.1%	4.9%
Sefton	49.9%	4.1%
Norfolk	49.7%	4.4%
Oxfordshire	49.7%	5.9%
Dudley	49.6%	4.1%
Leicestershire	49.6%	4.7%
Worcestershire	49.6%	5.4%
Gateshead	49.3%	8.4%
Bedfordshire	49.2%	4.7%
Bracknell Forest	49.1%	5.1%
Northumberland	48.8%	6.4%
Calderdale	48.8%	4.8%
Northamptonshire	48.7%	5.9%
South Gloucestershire	48.7%	3.9%
Bexley	48.6%	4.5%
Staffordshire	48.1%	4.7%
Medway	47.8%	3.9%
Telford and Wrekin	47.3%	4.6%
Darlington	47.2%	5.1%
Wigan	47.1%	5.0%
Hillingdon	47.1%	3.8%
Enfield	47.0%	3.2%
Ealing	47.0%	1.8%
Reading	46.8%	8.3%
North Tyneside	46.6%	5.3%
St Helens	45.8%	6.3%
Hounslow	45.6%	4.3%
Brent	45.6%	3.8%
Nottinghamshire	45.6%	5.7%
Bolton	45.4%	4.7%
Croydon	44.8%	4.2%
Wakefield	44.8%	4.4%
Stockton on Tees	44.8%	4.1%
Swindon	44.5%	6.4%
Isle of Wight	44.4%	7.3%
Kirklees	44.2%	5.5%
City of Peterborough	43.7%	7.4%
Redcar and Cleveland	43.4%	4.9%
Wandsworth	43.2%	4.8%
Brighton and Hove	43.2%	8.0%
Southampton	43.0%	5.3%
City of Derby	43.0%	6.4%
Wolverhampton	43.0%	5.8%
Rotherham	43.0%	5.0%
Waltham Forest	42.6%	6.7%
Coventry	42.6%	7.7%
Milton Keynes	42.5%	6.1%
North Lincolnshire	42.3%	2.7%
Tameside	42.0%	4.9%
Sheffield	41.9%	7.3%
Thurrock	41.8%	7.0%
Oldham	41.4%	5.2%
Birmingham	41.2%	5.9%
Durham	40.9%	6.5%
Walsall	40.6%	5.3%
Hartlepool	40.4%	5.0%
Rochdale	40.4%	5.8%
Halton	39.9%	4.2%
Merton	39.9%	6.3%
Doncaster	39.9%	7.0%
Leeds	39.6%	6.6%
Sunderland	39.2%	4.9%
City of Westminster	39.2%	6.1%
South Tyneside	39.1%	4.8%
Newham	38.9%	2.4%
Barking and Dagenham	38.2%	4.9%
Luton	38.1%	4.4%
Blackburn with Darwen	37.5%	6.8%
Leicester City	36.9%	8.0%
Newcastle Upon Tyne	36.7%	11.0%
North East Lincolnshire	36.5%	5.0%
Lambeth	35.9%	4.5%
Blackpool	35.6%	6.7%
Stoke on Trent	35.6%	7.8%
Lewisham	35.2%	7.1%
Barnsley	35.1%	7.0%
Liverpool	35.1%	8.9%
Middlesbrough	35.0%	6.6%
Tower Hamlets	34.8%	3.5%
Salford	34.3%	5.7%
Sandwell	34.3%	7.9%
Bradford	34.3%	7.7%
Portsmouth	34.3%	8.1%
Greenwich	33.8%	7.4%
Hackney	33.5%	6.9%
Southwark	33.4%	4.6%
City of Bristol	31.8%	10.8%
Manchester	31.0%	13.6%
Haringey	30.9%	7.9%
City of Nottingham	30.3%	10.8%
Islington	28.7%	11.4%
City of Kingston upon Hull	27.5%	9.6%
Knowsley	27.1%	11.6%

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