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A faith school in Blackburn has come top of the class in a new league table of secondary schools.

The Taheedul Islam Girls High School scooped the accolade for its astonishing success in terms of academic results, quality of teaching, and the behaviour and prospects of its pupils.

The new league table ranks more than 3,000 state-funded schools based on more than 20 official government indicators.

The data has been compiled by Trinity Mirror's data unit and backed by academics as giving a 'comprehensive' view of the quality of schools.

The rankings go beyond simple GCSE league tables by taking account a range of other factors.

They include everything from the expected level of achievement of pupils to levels of truancy.

Other measures affecting the final scores include pupil:teacher ratios and the number of children who go on to further education or jobs.

Every state-funded school in the country has been given a score out of 100 and star ratings out of five in each of four key categories: achievement, teaching, behaviour and outcomes.

David Ottewell, head of the data unit, said: "There is a huge amount of data available for state-funded schools, but it is often in different places and confusing for parents to find and understand.

"Our new ratings aim to bring this data together to give a comprehensive and accessible guide.

"No league table is perfect but we believe this represents a real advance in using freely available, official data to provide something useful for parents and teachers alike."

Andy Jones, dean of the faculty of education and pro vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, said the results were "bound to be of interest to the general public".

He added: "I think the data used gives a far more comprehensive view of a school's performance than the national league tables."

The top 10

Rank, school name, local authority, overall mark out of 100

1 Tauheedul Islam Girls High School (Blackburn with Darwen) 91

2 The Rochester Grammar School (Medway) 90

3 King Edward VI Handsworth School (Birmingham) 89

4 Invicta Grammar School (Kent) 88

5 Sutton Grammar School (Sutton) 87

6 Thomas Telford School (Telford and Wrekin) 87

7 Ilford County High School (Redbridge) 87

8 The Latymer School (Enfield) 87

9 Altrincham Grammar School for Girls (Trafford) 87

10 Kendrick School (Reading) 87