A PANEL set up to look into why East Yorkshire schools delivered “disappointing” GCSE results in 2011 said it believes their performance will be better this year.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council launched the review following the publication of GCSE league tables which showed some secondary schools in the region did not do as well as expected and fell below the levels of achievement they set in 2010.

East Yorkshire saw a 3.5 per cent drop in the number of pupils achieving “gold standard” results – five or more C-grades or above, including English and maths – taking the area from the top quarter nationally to the bottom third.

The review said other aspects of the region’s GCSE performance had shown improvements, and if ten more pupils at each school had reached the gold standard, it would have been in the top 25 per cent across the UK.

The panel’s recommendations include establishing an “excellence for all fund” to help schools produce better results.