THE leader of Monmouthshire council’s Labour group has attacked the drop in performance demonstrated at all of the authority’s secondary schools in their A Level results.

According to provisional results, which were published on August 13, the proportion of students who achieved A Level passes showed a decline at Chepstow School, Caldicot School and Monmouth Comprehensive School in all categories, comparing their A*, A*/A, A*-B, A*-C and A*-E grades from performance in 2014 to this year.

King Henry VIII in Abergavenny only showed improvement in A*-E grades of 0.31 per cent. All other categories there showed decline.

Labour’s Cllr Dimitri Batrouni said: “This Tory council has let our schools and children down again. Monmouthshire has now dropped below the Welsh average for students attaining good A level results.

"We were below the Welsh average in every category. In particular, there has been a staggering drop in pupils achieving A* - C grades.

"In this day and age, given the hyper competitive environment out there for our young people, these results are simply not acceptable.

"Our school system is in special measures, and now our A Level results have got worse.

"This Tory Council is just not good enough for Monmouthshire’s children.”

A Monmouthshire council spokeswoman said: “We are proud of the achievements of all of our students.

"Across Monmouthshire there has been an increase in the number of students achieving the recognised Level 3 threshold (of at least two A levels grades A-E) to 98.4%, an increase of 3.1% from last year.

"We were disappointed that despite the hard work of all of our students, there were reductions in the numbers of students attaining higher grades. We have worked with our schools to put plans in place to improve this. We expect our A Level results to mirror the high standards we see across all stage of our education provision.”