Fees at top-scoring St Paul's Girls' School are �3,161 per term

There are 60 of them in the top 100 schools, listed by the average points score their students' exam entries achieved.

At the top, with entries that averaged 115.1 points, is St Paul's Girls' School in London, with its ethos of "providing individuals with rigorous intellectual challenges".

The national average was 76 points, in the long-delayed tables just published by the Department for Education and Skills.

The results should have been published last autumn but were delayed by the re-grading furore, investigated by former schools chief inspector Mike Tomlinson.

A/AS-LEVEL TABLES More than 2,800 institutions Average points score: 76.0 Results from every school

Nineteen of the top 100 in the A-level table are independent, selective boys' schools.

There is a non-selective school in 19th place - Jaamiatul Imaam Muhammad Zakaria School in Bradford, which is a private Muslim girls' school.

The top state school is Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet - a boys' grammar.

But some comprehensives have better results than many private or state selective schools.

The best-ranked is Durham Johnston Comprehensive, in Durham itself, where the 159 students averaged 98.8 points on their exam entries, putting it in 149th place nationally.

The head teacher, Richard Bloodworth, said the school traditionally had done well at A-level, albeit with "a fairly healthy scepticism" about the process among students and staff.

University admissions

They had not been affected by the row over some universities' lower offers to strong applicants from schools which do not have a record of good exam results.

Durham Johnston Comprehensive - beat many selective schools

"All of our students who want university offers get university offers," he said.

"The ones who have the problems tend to be those who applied to Oxbridge and, for reasons that neither we nor they understand, don't get places.

"We understand there are more good candidates than places available so there's an element of lottery about it," he added.

"But I wouldn't dream of making a big fuss about it."

As a Cambridge graduate himself, he could see that admissions tutors were seeking people who would best fit their institutions.

If calls for greater "transparency" in the process meant those subjective judgements had to become objective tests, "we run the risk of losing the distinctive character of those institutions that has been built up over years, and I would regard that as a backward step", he said.

'Should have been abolished'

The results, which should have been published last autumn, were further delayed from January, when the GCSE tables came out, because the department was still not satisfied the data were valid.

Mr Bloodworth's predecessor at Durham Johnston - now general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, John Dunford - said the crisis had shown that "exam marking is not the exact science that people believed it to be".

"These league tables perpetuate the myth that schools can be placed in precise rank order on their results. The tables are a statistical nonsense.

"Arriving so late in the year, the tables are a major irrelevance. It would have been a good year to abolish them," Dr Dunford said.

Colleges fare badly

At the other end of the table nationally was another County Durham school - Ferryhill Comprehensive. The students there achieved the fewest points per exam entry: 31.2 on average.

Salford College appeared to have done even worse but - prompted by media inquiries - complained on the eve of publication that its results had been wrongly reported.

The education department is awaiting more information from the college.

On the published figures, further education and sixth form colleges did account for most of the worst performers.

The Association of Colleges said: "The reason that colleges predominate with lower grades in A-levels is that they are largely non-selective, inclusive institutions which will take anyone who wants to try to achieve.

"Unlike schools which are very concerned to protect their position in league tables, they do not screen out people who do not have a high chance of success," said a spokeswoman.

The local education authority whose schools performed best was Sutton, with 85.2 points per entry. Worst was Lambeth, on 53.6.

The national average among LEAs - excluding independent schools - was 71.4 points.

Congratulating people on their achievements, the School Standards Minister, David Miliband, said the new, modular assessments meant they could be motivated by their success as they went along.

Deciding which subjects to study at A-level after their first year of AS-levels allowed them to make "right choices for their future", he said.

Points system

The way the points are calculated uses the new "tariff" adopted by the Universities' and Colleges' Admissions Service.

This awards, for example, 60 points for an A-grade AS-level and 120 for an A-grade A-level.

It is the first time the results have been published in this way so they are not comparable with those of previous years.

The official tables include an alternative measure: the average points achieved by each student.

This favours institutions which enter people for a larger number of A-levels. Someone who took three A-levels and got grade Ds would score the same points as someone who took one and got the top grade.