Bradley School has the best results in North Yorkshire with flawless scores in the annual national attainment tables and a significant proportion passing higher levels.

Every 11-year-old at the school last year achieved level four in English, maths and science exams. Level four is the national benchmark "typical" 11-year-olds are expected to reach.

But Bradley also had the best results in the county as 88 per cent of its pupils achieved one grade higher, level five, in English and 76 per cent achieved level five in maths and science.

Bradley, Kildwick and Thornton-in Craven all returned a flawless mark of 300 (a score obtained by adding together the percentage of those achieving level four in all three subjects).

Bradley head teacher Ella Preston was proud of the results but was quick to point out that other schools had worked hard and did not want to deflect attention away from others' achievements.

With such small schools, a child who misses the tests for any reason still counts as not having achieved level four, which means illness can drag a school's performance down. Even more galling, Mrs Preston said, a child could be taken out of school by parents to go on holiday, thus negatively affecting the school's performance.

Bradley has come close to the 300 mark in recent years, as our tables show. Last year one child did not achieve level four in English, dragging the mark down by four percentage points.

Asked if the school had done anything different, Mrs Preston replied: "Perhaps, we have focused more on English, not sticking strictly to the literature strategy and this has probably improved our writing results."

Barbara Thompson, head at Thornton-in-Craven, can feel particularly vindicated after last year's results showed the school slumped to the bottom of any Craven "league table" with an aggregate of just 164.

Twelve months ago Thornton's marks were affected by an unusually high number of children with special needs at the school and Mrs Thompson predicted there would be a big improvement this year. How right she has been improved, with the aggregate leaping from 164 to that flawless 300.

"It just goes to show that this will happen from time to time in a small school and this year it shows what we are capable of," she said.

She said she was not a fan of the way the Government presented the tests but they were there and she had to live with them.

"I genuinely believe it is an unfair system," she said.

Ten schools - Cononley, Gargrave, Sutton County, Greatwood, Ings, St Stephen's, Water Street, Silsden Hothfield Street, Steeton and Gisburn Road in Barnoldswick - also have reason to be satisfied. They all recorded their best aggregate score in the last five years.

The Government says that its value added tables give a more rounded picture. These are based on the progress pupils achieve between the age of seven and 11 in their national tests with 100 being a notional standard. Any score above 103 puts the school in the top 100 in the country.

A league of top schools for value added performance in Craven are:

1= Ings and Sutton CofE (both 102.3); 3 Salterforth (102.2); 4 Kildwick (102.1) 5 Greatwood (101.9); 6 Water Street (101.8); 7 Embasy (101.1); 8 Gargrave (101.0); Sutton County (100.9); 10 Thornton-in-Craven (100.7)