Children in care in Bradford are performing better than the national average in GCSE exams, new figures reveal.

In the last academic year 14 per cent of the children in the district achieved five A* to C GCSE grades.

This is Bradford's best ever performance and more than twice the national average of six per cent.

In 2001/02 none of the 47 children in care sitting GCSEs in Bradford managed to achieve five A* to C passes.

But in the last academic year seven of the 51 pupils achieved five higher grade passes.

The district has previously lagged behind the national average for those children but the latest figures are more than twice as good.

The news has been welcomed by Education Bradford, the private firm operated by Serco which runs the district's schools.

Ewen Godfrey, the manager of the company's education matters team, said: "These are our best ever results but you are talking about a small sample of children.

One of the things about looked after children is that every child is different and there is no one set thing which you can say is responsible for the improvement, it is an accumulation of lots of things."

For the past nine months Education Bradford's school improvement officers have been focusing on the performance of the children during their visits to schools.

And in the last financial year £250,000 has been provided to schools to provide additional support for them. This funding will continue for the next two financial years.

Mr Godfrey said: "This works out at £619 per looked after pupil and is paid to each school as part of its general funding."

Education Bradford and Bradford Council's social services department also try to identify those children who would benefit from home tutoring outside school.

Although the five higher GCSE pass rates is Bradford's best ever performance by children in care, the figure of 14 per cent is well below the overall average of all Bradford pupils achieving five A* to C average of 46.6 per cent or the overall national average of 57.1 per cent.

A report on looked after children's performance has been produced for Bradford Council's Corporate Parenting Panel which oversees the authority's services affecting children in care.

The report also reveals looked after pupils' performance in key stage one two and three standard assessment tests - sat by seven, 11 and 14-year-olds.

The key stage one results for the last year improved with more pupils achieving the expected levels in English, science and maths compared with the previous year.

However in key stage two and three tests the percentage of pupils reaching expected levels in English, maths and science has fallen.