Brighton College has proven itself to be the best independent school in Sussex – and among the highest achieving in the country.

A staggering 99.95% of GCSEs from the Eastern Road school this year were A* to C grades – with close to 90% either A* or A.

The results have been released by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) which works alongside the country’s independent schools.

The second top performing school in Sussex was Roedean, also in Brighton, with 73.14% of all GCSE grades either A or A*.

More than 99% of grades were between A* and C.

Third best was Burgess Hill School for Girls with 69.27% of grades A*/A and 97.66% A* to C with St Leonards-Mayfield School fourth with 69.12% of grades A*/A and 98.18% A* to C. Fifth was Christ’s Hospital with 64.78% A*/A and 97.26% A* to C.

As well as being named the top school in the county, Brighton College was also ranked the 25th top performing in the country. Nationally schools were ranked by the proportion of exam entries awarded A or A*.

The top school across the whole of the UK was North London Collegiate School with 98.81% of grades A*/A and 100% A* to C.

Nationally more than 32% of all entries received the top A* grade, up slightly from 32% last year, while around 60.6% of entries scored at least an A, up 0.2 percentage points from 2013.

This is around three times as many as the national average across all schools.

Additionally the vast majority (94.4%) of entries from private school pupils achieved at least a C.

The ISC’s analysis of the statistics found that just over three-quarters (77.7%) of pupils at its schools achieved at least five A*-C grades this year, including English, maths, science, and a modern foreign language.

The average haul for an independent school GCSE pupil this year was two A* grades and seven As.

ISC Chairman Barnaby Lenon said: “The independent sector is celebrating another set of fantastic GCSE results. In a year when results nationally dipped slightly at the top end, the proportion of our entries awarded grades A* and A has risen.

“It is also notable that ISC pupils achieved a high proportion of the top grades in hard subjects such as maths, separate sciences and languages. Many pupils will continue with these subjects at A-level and then university.”