The Corsham School has just found out that it has achieved the best progress scores for its A-level students out of any mixed state-funded school in England.

The latest league table results for A-levels announced last month show that the progress students made between GCSE and A- levels was the highest of any mixed comprehensive.

The school’s Contextual Value Added (CVA) score was 1059.6, placing it joint 13th in the country. The score was only topped by ten independent selective schools, a selective Catholic comprehensive and a selective academy.

Headteacher Martin Williams was delighted with the news. He said: “We are extremely pleased with the result. As a school the students are amazingly creative and this has come across. We are delighted by it because it has been a huge team effort to get this far.

“The others at the top of the league table are either fee-paying schools or they are selective and so we are the highest performing mixed state-funded school in the country.”

Schools that reach 1,000 points have demonstrated that every student has achieved their personal target grade.

Andy Kingan, head of sixth form, put the success down to developing sixth formers’ independence. Mr Kingan said: “It is really important that we get students to take control of their own learning if they are to take it seriously.

“We were a pilot scheme for a new qualification called the Extra Project Qualification where the students choose their own topic and spend the year researching it in preparation for a report and a presentation to their peers.

“Universities increasingly like this sort of thing because it is done in the same style as researching for a university assignment.

“I’m very proud of their achievements.”