SCHOOLS on Teesside have been bucking a national downward trend in GCSE pass rates.

Youngsters at the Macmillan College, Middlesbrough, achieved a 93 per cent pass rate of five or more passes at grade C or better - a 20 per cent increase on last year's performance.

Records were broken at Yarm School, Yarm, with 17.4 per cent of teenagers gaining the highest percentage of A* passes at the school. Forty eight of the year group of 84 pupils gained ten or more passes with everyone passing maths, English and physics.

At the Ian Ramsey School, Stockton, 57 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C grades.

One of their top scorers, Robert Icke, was confirmed as being among the brightest youngsters in the country with 13 A* grades.

Egglescliffe pupil Sarah Bailey achieved 12 A* and one A pass while Rachel Lockwood gained 12 A* passes. Najam Imam and Sean Knox each scored 12, a mix of A* and A passes. Najam and classmate Christopher Robson were among the top five marks in the UK for GCSE general studies, out of 6,333 candidates.

Seventy three per cent of Egglescliffe's exam year gained five or more A* to C passes - the third consecutive year results have been above 70 per cent.

Pupils at Teesside High School, in Eaglescliffe, achieved a 100 per cent pass rate at grades A* to C and this year each pupil gained A* to C grades in an average of 9.1 subjects.

Alison Butler, from Ingleby Barwick, scored straight As in all eleven of her subjects.

Hartlepool saw its best performance with 46 per cent of pupils, across the town, achieving five or more A* to C grades.

Redcar pupil Rebecca Baxter, 16, of Rye Hills School, received a letter of congratulations from the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance for her marks in GCSE double award science, which put her in the top five out of more than 207,000 entrants.

Provisional results indicate 47 per cent of Redcar pupils sitting GCSEs achieved five or more A* to C grades, while 99 per cent of entrants in English and 97 per cent in maths showed better than the national trend.