THE number of young people in Blackburn with Darwen leaving secondary school with a good crop of GCSEs is above the national average, Government figures show.

The department for education today publish its annual secondary school "league tables" detailing the GCSE results of every school in the country.

Lancashire Telegraph:

TABLES: blackburn .xlsx

The tables detail a number of measures including how many pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs including English and maths, and the numbers leaving having fulfilled the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) criteria of achieving good passes in English, maths, the sciences ­history or geography and a language.

Overall in Blackburn with Darwen, 61 per cent of pupils achieving five or more good GCSE passes including English and maths, above the national average of 56 per cent.

The numbers achieving the EBacc was 22 per cent, just slightly lower than the national average of 23 per cent.

Cllr Maureen Bateson, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education, said: "This is testament to the hard work of teachers, pupils and parents, and shows the impact being made by our schools to improve educational standards further in the borough. The results are generally positive but we won’t rest on our laurels – we will continue to work closely with our schools to make sure we all get the best possible outcomes for our young people.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

(Tauheedul Islam Boys' School)

Top performing state school in Blackburn with Darwen was named as Tauheedul Islam Girls' High School, where 93 per cent achieved the benchmark. It was also number one in the state schools for the numbers of girls achieving the EBacc ­— 79 per cent.

Principal Hafez Lukman Ahmed said: “We are absolutely delighted that our pupils have secured another exceptional set of life changing outcomes. This clearly demonstrates the incredible effort and dedication of all our talented pupils, loyal parents and our amazing staff”.  

Second among the state-schools was Tauheedul Islam Boys' School, with 83 per cent leaving with good five or more GCSEs including English and maths.

Principal Majid Ditta, said: “We are delighted with our continued success, which will help our young men to go on to achieve even greater success in the future. All of our efforts are geared towards giving our pupils a real chance to become the leaders of tomorrow.”

And at both schools, children made well above average progress. This score measures the progress pupils made between the end of primary school and the end secondary compared to pupils across England who got similar results at the end of Year Six.

Lancashire Telegraph:

The best performing non-selective school was Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School with 80 per cent of young people achieving five or more good GCSE results including English and Maths.

The only other school where children made well above average progress was St Wilfrid's CE Academy.