Performance accolade for Paston and Gresham' s

Paston College and Gresham's figure among the top schools in the county in a new performance table. The CVA (Contextual Value Added) table is designed to demonstrate how good a school or college is at teaching by showing how well all their students have progressed.

Paston College and Gresham's figure among the top schools in the county in a new performance table.

The CVA (Contextual Value Added) table is designed to demonstrate how good a school or college is at teaching by showing how well all their students have progressed.

CVA also makes allowances for any factors that might skew the score, such as gender, pupils taking more than three A levels, and the types of qualifications studied - this is the 'contextual' part of CVA.

The Hewett School in Norwich topped the table just ahead of Norwich School and Paston and Greshams were third and fourth. .

Paston principal Peter Mayne said the statistics underlined why Paston attracted such a wide range of students. 'Sixth form colleges are excellent at ensuring that the most able perform really well at A level, in fact they are slightly better at this than selective schools. Yet they also excel in helping more modestly qualified students to perform well - better than would have been predicted from their GCSEs," he said.