Tables showing exam results in Scotland's secondary schools have been published for the first time for two years.

Click here for BBC News Online's tables

The so-called school "league tables" were not compiled last year due to the fiasco which led to thousands of Scottish students receiving incorrect, incomplete or delayed results.

The results of last year's exam diet have been published along with this year's figures, but the confusion which surrounded the year 2000 results has led to inconsistencies in the tables.

The chaos last year involved the implementation of the new Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.

The exam structure changed in 2000

Judith Gillespie, development manager of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said the figures would be distorted by this change in the exam structure.

She said: "It is a different style of exam and so it is not totally comparable with what happened before 2000."

The tables were bad news for Glasgow City Council, which came bottom of the league for both Standard grades and Highers.

The city showed a slight improvement on 1999 figures, with 65% of fourth year pupils gaining more than five Standard grade awards at Level 4 or above.

Inner city deprivation

Just 13% of pupils in Glasgow gained three awards at Level 6 or better in the Highers, putting the city firmly at the bottom of the table.

Tables of authorities' performance

Ken Corsar, education services director at Glasgow City Council, said: "This is yet another example of a crude schools' league table which takes no account of extremely important factors such as social and economic circumstances."

The island councils of Shetland and Orkney came top of the Standard grade table, though the particular conditions in these areas were said to make it difficult to compare them with mainland authorities.

East Renfrewshire Council, which shares a border with Glasgow, was third in the Standard grade table and came out top for Highers, with 39% of pupils getting three or more.

East Dunbartonshire Council, which also borders Glasgow, was the second best local authority area for Highers, highlighting concerns that the tables fail to take account of the deprivation of inner city areas.

Cathy Jamieson: "Local improvement plans"

Dundee City Council also performed badly in both tables.

However, outside the big cities, Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire also failed to rise far from the bottom of either league.

Scottish Borders, Aberdeenshire and Stirling Council performed well above the Scottish average in both tables.

The national average pass rate for Highers was 22%, up slightly on 1999.

But critics said these raw results fail to show factors like the social deprivation some schools have to overcome.

Even the Scottish Executive warned that exam performance was not the only way to measure the success of a school.

New education minister Cathy Jamieson said the executive had introduced a series of local improvement plans and school development plans which take account of factors other than traditional academic attainment.

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The table below shows the relative performance of Scottish education authorities.

The figures are the percentage of their pupils achieving five or more awards at Level 4 or better by the end of their S4 year - equivalent to Standard grades 3-4.

Clicking the name of any authority will take you to all its schools in our main league tables.

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The next table shows the relative performance of Scottish education authorities in Highers.

The figures are the percentage of their pupils achieving three or more awards at Level 6 or better by the end of their S5 year - equivalent to Higher grades A-C.

Clicking the name of any authority will take you to all its schools in our main league tables.

Back to main text