More teenagers gain good grades at GCSE
Official GCSE figures released by the Government confirmed the improvements suggested by provisional results, which came out in the summer.
However, the official results for Leicester were lower than the provisional results published by the city council in August.
Nobody at the city council gave an explanation for the difference when asked by the Leicester Mercury yesterday.
City education bosses have ploughed £8.2m over two years into projects to improve standards in the city's schools as part of its Raising Attainment plan.
Official figures show that approximately 140 more children achieved five GCSEs of at least a C grade, including English and maths this year compared to last.
But that was not enough to make strides up the national league table because other authorities did as well, or better.
In the city, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) confirmed that 43.3% of pupils achieved five GCSE grades of C or above including English and maths, up from 39.2% last year. The national average is 49.7%.
Leicester City Council said in August that 44% of students had achieved the benchmark.
Leicester's education bosses are understood to be delighted with the rate of improvement which, at 4.1 percentage points, is almost twice the average national increase of 2.1. Nobody at the city council was available for comment, however.
It leaves Leicester 132nd out of 151 local authorities, compared with 131st out of 149 last year.
City officials are awaiting the conclusions of a review by government adviser Professor David Woods into progress at Leicester's lowest performing schools – New College, in New Parks, Babington College, in Beaumont Leys, and Fullhurst College in Braunstone.
The county's GCSE results also improved. Bosses, however, admitted they were disappointed they were not as good as hoped, with Leicestershire dropping seven places.
Councillor Ivan Ould, the county council's cabinet member for education, said: "We are obviously pleased with the improvement but we would have liked it to have been more and I expect it to be more.
"There is a sense of disappointment but we do look at the trend over the past few years and there has been a continuous culture of improvement."
In the county, 52.4% of pupils achieved five GCSE results of at least a C including English and maths, compared with 51.7% last year.
The results took the authority from 40th in the national rankings to joint 47th this year.
An official school-by-school breakdown of results will be published in January.
Pupils across the city and county achieved better results this year than last
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