They passed 57 per cent of their examinations at the top two grades, compared with 18 per cent nationally, the Independent Schools Council (ISC) said. The 38,821 candidates at its member schools passed 26 per cent of papers at A*, more than four times the national average of 5.9 per cent. Just over 95 per cent of entries were awarded at least a C grade.

St Paul’s Girls’ School regained its position at the top of The Times’ table of results with 96.5 per cent of exams at A* and A grades. The £11,100-a-year school in Hammersmith, West London, slipped to second place last year for the first time since 1995.

Elizabeth Diggory, High Mistress of St Paul’s, described the results as excellent but questioned the value of GCSE as a qualification. She said that she was disappointed by the Government’s rejection of proposals by Sir Mike Tomlinson, the former head of Ofsted, for a shift to a diploma.

“We need to be moving away from GCSE and not place so much emphasis on it. They don’t get on to advanced-level work soon enough and they could do so much more than they do now,” Miss Diggory said. “They have to do GCSEs because universities use them as part of selection procedures, but there tends to be too much focus on the exam. ”

The 88 girls at St Paul’s achieved A* grades in 66.8 per cent of their 805 exams, more than 11 times the national average. None of the entries scored less than a B, which went to just 28 papers.

The City of London School for Girls, up to second this year from 13th in 2004, has the highest proportion of exams awarded an A*, at 69.6 per cent.

The High Master of St Paul’s School, the top-ranked boys’ school in seventh place, said that he intended to switch to the international GCSE (iGCSE) for science and could do the same for maths. Martin Stephen said that the domestic GCSE curriculum no longer prepared students adequately for A level. “Through no particular fault of its own, GCSE has always been confused about its role. Is it a leaving certificate representing a guarantee of minimum competence? Is it a qualifier for further and higher education?” he said. “By trying to do both, it has managed not to do either terribly well. It has probably been just about satisfactory until the new specifications recently announced.

“These do things such as take all the mathematical content out of some of the science papers and are forcing a larger number of schools to move to the iGCSE on the basis that this actually is a preparation for A level.” Dr Stephen said nothing had changed his view that league tables of exam results were a “cancerous growth on the face of education”.

He added: “I know schools in inner-city areas where to achieve the national average at GCSE is a truly outstanding achievement. You would need a magnifying glass to find those schools in league tables yet they have magnified the chances of their pupils in a quite extraordinary manner.”

Jonathan Shephard, the ISC’s general secretary, said: “The GCSE is a valuable test for the broad range of pupils. We do, however, continue to have concerns about the usefulness of some coursework and the GCSE’s capacity to stretch pupils at all levels of ability.”

• In the table of A-level results (August 27) St James Independent School for Girls, London, scored 371.4 points, not 300, placing the school 150th in the rankings, not 539th.

  www.timesonline.co.uk/education
  The Times top schools at GCSE and A Level

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