STUDENTS in North Yorkshire made the grade again today as they celebrated reams of top A-level passes.

The national figures showed the results up again, to an 89.1 per cent pass rate from last year's 88.5 per cent and also showed girls doing better than boys.

Local schools and colleges reported a similar general upwards trend, but said achievement seemed to be well-balanced across the gender divide.

Four students from York College got four out of the top five marks in the country for their 20th Century History A-level exams.

Other successes included one student who got one of the top five Law passes in the country and a group of five maths students who gained four or five grade A passes each.

St Peter's School in York saw eight girls and 12 boys celebrate complete sets of A grades across the arts and sciences with four pupils getting five grade As each.

Bootham School saw some pupils gaining up to nine high grades, in A, AS and S level grades.

North Yorkshire schools' overall results were not available when we went to press, but individual schools pointed to improved or consistently high results.

Students at Lady Lumley's School, Pickering, had an average points score of 22.9, up from 22.4 last year.

At Malton School, results stayed high, with a 95 per cent pass rate, six per cent above the national average.

York school sixth forms saw their best results with an average pass rate of more than 92 per cent.

Joseph Rowntree School's results were its best ever and Huntington entered 30 per cent more students and more than 20 per cent of students across the schools got A grades.

This year's national results were broken down by gender for the first time and showed that 54 per cent of entries were from women and 46 per cent from men.

Prince William gained an A grade in Geography, a B in History of Art and a C in Biology.

PICTURE: Eighteen of the 20 students from St Peter's School, York, who got straight As in their A-levels