Three schools in East Cambridgeshire are celebrating having beaten the national average in the GCSE league table figures.

The national average of -0.03 (Progress 8 score) and 62.6 per cent of students achieving a grade C or better in English and maths, has been beaten by Soham, Bottisham and Witchford village colleges.

This is the first year that the government is using its new Progress 8 measure to rank the performance of schools at GCSE.

The old ‘gold standard’ only counted GCSE grades at C or above. Now, schools get credit for the amount of improvement all pupils have made since they left primary school.

It is based on the results of up to eight qualifications, including English and maths, which are given particular prominence.

Soham Village College scored 0.26 for the 2015/15 period, with a commendable 70 per cent of students achieving a grade C or better in English and maths.

Bottisham Village College, meanwhile, achieved a Progress 8 score of 0.21 with 79 per cent of students achieving a grade C or better in English and maths.

Witchford Village College scored 0.17 with a percentage rate of 59.

However, Ely College scored -0.41 on their Progress 8 score, with just 50 per cent of students achieving a grade C or better in English and maths.

According to the Department for Education, Progress 8 has been designed to encourage schools to offer a “broad and balanced curriculum at KS4” and to “reward” schools for the teaching of all their pupils.

The new benchmark is based on the progress pupils make from the end of primary school until the end of secondary school.

Today’s data from the DfE also includes provisional Attainment 8 figures, which measures the achievement of a pupil across eight qualifications: maths (double weighted), English (double weighted), three English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects and three other subjects.

It is calculated by converting existing A*-G GCSE grades into numbers.

According to the DfE, the average Attainment 8 score per Cambridgeshire pupil in 2015/16 was 51.4, up from 49.3 the previous year.

The DfE calculated the average Attainment 8 score across England as 49.8.