From left, standing: Head of ICT at The Stonehenge School, Amesbury, John Powell, headteacher Andy Packer, deputy headteacher Carol Sambrook and head of Year 10 Sarah Busby with Year 11 computing students who are predicted to do even better than last year's class. DA4742EDUCATION chiefs have singled out The Stonehenge School, Amesbury, for special praise after another year of dramatic improvements in their GCSE results.

Bob Wolfson, Wiltshire's education director, has labelled efforts at the school to increase the numbers of pupils attaining top-level grades as "exceptional".

New school performance tables published last week showed that 58 per cent of Stonehenge's pupils achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE in 2003 - a huge leap from little more than a third in 2002.

Carol Sambrook, deputy headteacher, said: "The results are very pleasing.

"We look at every child and try and match our teaching to their ability.

"We are confident that we are able to get the best out of all our students.

"Each child is set individual targets and we work very hard to make sure those students achieve those targets.

"The results that we have achieved this time are the result of teamwork.

"We get our students working well, their parents have to back them and then, finally, we have a team of excellent teachers who do everything they can to get every child to achieve their potential."

The school also scored well under the government's value-added measure, which is based on the progress that individual pupils at state schools make between Key Stage 3, when they are 14, and GCSE.

Stonehenge's value-added measure was 103.2 - well above the average and just falling outside the top five per cent of highest scoring schools.

Headteacher Andrew Packer said: "Of course we are very proud of what everybody achieved last year but our focus now is firmly on the future and the success of our current Year 11s in the summer, and every other child in the school."

Elsewhere, South Wilts Grammar School and Bishop Wordsworth's Grammar School, both in Salisbury, scored very highly with 99 per cent of the boys at Bishop Wordsworth's entering the sixth form with five or more top GCSE results.

Headteacher Dr Stuart Smallwood said: "I'm delighted, it's a great accolade for the boys and for the staff. But the performance of the boys in exams is only half the story.

"What we try to do is enhance the pupils' life skills and chances and give them the widest choice about what to do with their lives."

In Dorset, 69 per cent of pupils at Gillingham School achieved at least five grades A* to C in last year's GCSE exams and at Shaftesbury School this figure was 58 per cent - a jump of ten per cent from 2002.

Among the top performing schools in Hampshire were Moyles Court in Ringwood and The Burgate, Fordingbridge, where 77 per cent of pupils achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE in 2003, compared to 56 per cent in 2002.