Schools across Brighton and Hove are above the national average for progress made by pupils during secondary school.

The government's new Progress 8 league tables were brought into reward schools for the teaching of pupils of all abilities, across eight GCSEs including English and maths.

It compares pupils' results with the achievements of other youngsters with the same prior attainment, and measures performance across eight qualifications.

All state schools in Brighton and Hove met the Government's new floor target. 

The top five state schools for the value added measure include Cardinal Newman, Blatchington Mill, Dorothy Stringer, Longhill High School and Portslade Aldridge Community Academy. 

The national picture was more bleak with almost one in 10 secondary schools not reaching the Government floor target for progress. 

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said that the figures, based on last summer's GCSE results, showed that the hard work of teachers and pupils is leading to higher standards.

Mr Gibb said: "Today's figures confirm that the hard work of teachers and pupils across the country is leading to higher standards, and for that they should be congratulated.

"As well as confirming that the number of young people taking GCSEs in core academic subjects is rising, today's figures show the attainment gap between disadvantaged and all other pupils has now narrowed by 7% since 2011."

However headteachers warned that the results had been achieved "against a national backdrop of a funding and recruitment crisis".

Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "Congratulations to schools and pupils on these results, which have been achieved against a national backdrop of a funding and recruitment crisis.

"Progress 8 is a fairer measure of school performance than the old measure of the proportion of pupils achieving at least five A* to C grades at GCSE including English and maths.

"It better reflects the fact that children start their secondary school education at different levels of academic ability and it aims to judge schools on the progress that all their pupils make, rather than an arbitrary measure of GCSE attainment.

"However, Progress 8 has teething problems, and must be treated with some caution. Its biggest weakness is that the score of a school is disproportionately affected by as few as one or two pupils recording anomalous results.

"We are aware of cases where Progress 8 scores have been badly affected by the fact that a very small number of vulnerable children have missed exams as a result of illnesses or other personal crises."

For the first time this year, schools have not been judged on the proportion of pupils scoring at least five C grades at GCSE, including in English and maths.

But some state schools in Brighton and Hove came under the national average for number of pupils getting A*-C GCSE grades in English and maths. 

More Sussex analysis to follow.