DESPITE claims the Government has made school league tables less reliable by ‘moving the goalposts’ many of the region's schools excelled in getting students through their GCSE exams this year.

Ministers have made exams harder, ruled that re-sits do not count towards school performance tables and scrapped some vocational qualifications.

It led to the number of state secondary schools in England judged to be underperforming more than doubling from 154 in 2013 to 330 last year.

In the North-East leading state secondary schools such as Carmel College in Darlington, where 87 per cent of eligible students obtained five good GCSE passes, including maths and English, took the changes in their stride.

At Hurworth School and Sedgefield Community College 78 per cent of eligible students got five good GCSE passes while the figure was 76 per cent at Egglescliffe School, Stockton.

Traditionally-high performing selective grammar schools in North Yorkshire had even better results with 97 per cent of eligible Ripon Grammar School students making the grade.

Independent schools such as Queen Ethelberga’s College in York grabbed the headlines after all 38 candidates achieved five good GCSEs but other North-East independents, such as Barnard Castle School, Yarm School and Polam Hall School, in Darlington, fell foul of the Government’s refusal to recognise the more challenging International GCSE preferred by increasing numbers of private schools and were rated as having zero passes.

David Dunn, headmaster at Yarm School said: “Since the vast majority of Yarm School pupils take IGCSE in English, the Government league tables do not take into account our pupils’ achievements in many of the core subject areas, which only serves to distort the results.

“As they are, the Government league tables are not really worth the paper they are written on as the achievements of so many top-performing pupils are not being accurately recorded.”

A number of North-East schools failed to reach the Government’s floor standard of at least 40 per cent obtaining five good GCSEs including maths and English.

They included the former Gillbrook Academy in Middlesbrough, which has become part of the new Hillsview Academy, where 27 per cent of students obtained five good GCSE passes.

But at one school where 29 per cent made the grade - Darlington School of Mathematics and Science - the head teacher, Calvin Kipling, was unapologetic at preferring to allow many of his GCSE students to re-sit, to increase their chances of passing.

“I wrote to parents in October 2013 and said if we have to make a choice between league tables and increasing life chances for our pupils we would chose the latter every time.”

The decision to ignore the Government’s insistence on only the first exam performance counting has resulted in 55 per cent of eligible students obtaining five good GCSE passes, including English and maths, said Mr Kipling.

Vince Allen, North-East spokesman for the National Union of Teachers, said: “This year tops the lot in terms of the uselessness of these performance tables.”

Schools which fail to meet the 40 per cent GCSE floor standard could face action, including being closed down or taken over by a new sponsor.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: “Now pupils are spending more time in the classroom, not constantly sitting exams, and 90,000 more children are taking core academic subjects that will help them succeed in work and further study.”