A CITY school with concerns about the GCSE grades its students received in a core subject is set to return every paper to the exam board for re-marking.

Julie Farr, headteacher at Bishop Perowne High School in Merriman's Hill Road, said she was "very curious" about some of the results which her students received yesterday morning.

"We are going to raise a number of queries with an exam board on behalf of our students," she said.

"We believe there's a problem with the integrity of some of the results.

"We are asking for a total re-mark of one of the subjects that the entire year group - 210 students - sat, along with a handful of others."

Although she would not reveal which subject would be sent back for re-marking, the core subjects include maths, English and science.

Mrs Farr said that 54 per cent of students received five or more A* to C grades this year - but said she believes this percentage will increase significantly when the papers are re-marked.

"We carried out a lot of analysis on Wednesday night and yesterday morning and we are pretty confident that our information is correct.

"We rigorously monitor students' progress throughout the year and are pretty sure we know what they are going to get.

"We will now go through the exam board procedure and will move quickly on behalf of the students. By the end of September we will have feedback from the exam board."

Mrs Farr said although it was not common to send so many papers back for re-marking, there tended to be a handful each year.

"Last year we sent three English papers back which had been marked 'U'," she said. "When they came back all of them were 'A'."

But despite her doubts, Mrs Farr said that the atmosphere among students collecting their results yesterday was buoyant.

"At the end of the day, one third of the students still received 12 GCSEs grades A* to C and a quarter received 10 GCSE grades A* to C," she said. "There have been some outstanding performances from some very gifted and talented students.

"We were particularly pleased because there has been national interest in the fact that boys seem to underperform, but out of our top 20 students, 10 were boys, and a boy topped the list."