At least four in ten Bradford pupils have achieved five or more higher grade GCSE passes.

It is the first time the district has hit the 40 per cent mark for at least five A* to C grades, the provisional figures reveal.

And education bosses predict that up to 45 per cent of students will get the grades in the results announced yesterday.

However the private company which runs the district's schools still looks set to miss targets set by the Government.

Education Bradford, which is operated by Serco, was set the goal of getting 46 per cent of pupils to achieve five or more A* to C grades.

But the company's director of secondary school improvement David Platt has still hailed the results as great news for Bradford.

He said: "These are brilliant results from Bradford and it is down to the hard work and commitment of the teachers, the school managers and the pupils.

"The majority of schools across the district have done substantially better this year compared with last year's performance."

These were the first pupils to have spent five years at the same school following the schools' reorganisation in 2000.

Carlton Bolling in Undercliffe and Buttershaw High School were among the schools celebrating their best-ever performance yesterday.

Both schools saw the number of pupils achieving five A* to C grades leap from 19 per cent to 33 per cent.

Among the star students at Carlton Bolling was Usman Najib who achieved three A* grades, two As, three Bs and a C.

Some of the district's best and worst performing schools have achieved record results. Dixons' City Technology College saw 99 per cent of its pupils achieve five or more A* to C passes and 42 per cent of all exams sat were graded A* or A.

The school's principal Sir John Lewis said: "These are the best results in the history of Dixons' CTC. This year group had an exemplary attitude to their work and to the college as a whole."

Staff at Immanuel C of E College, which went into special measures last year, and Rhodesway School were celebrating getting 25 per cent of their students to achieve five or more A* to C grades for the first time.

Tong School pupil Lyn Ha, 16, of Tyersal, got six As and nine Bs and her mark was in the top ten in the country for applied science.

She said: "I didn't think I would get as many As but when I was told that my mark was in the top ten it was just a complete shock."