The mixed comprehensive on the outskirts of Durham city is in a largely middle-class area. More than half its Year 11 pupils gain five grades A to C - significantly above the national average and placing it around fourth in the county - and levels of unauthorised absence are low.

But further scrutiny of the GCSE tables reveals an interesting picture of commitment to vocational qualifications. For the past seven years staff at the over-subscribed 11-18 school have chosen to give Year 10 and 11 pupils, both low achievers and the more academically able, a taste of vocational education.

The debate about how to bridge the academic divide, currently a political hot potato, has been a constant challenge to Ron Featonby who has developed the school’s pre-16 vocational courses since the end of the 1980s. At one time, under his guidance, all Framwellgate Moor’s Year 10 and 11 pupils did City and Guilds foundation programmes, alongside GCSEs.

Vocational qualifications currently do not count towards league-table ranking and a quick trawl through the charts shows most schools which offer them tend to have fewer pupils gaining five grades A to C at GCSE.

With a creditable ranking under its belt Framwellgate Moor could easily have chosen to consolidate its position by concentrating upon GCSE results, perhaps targeting pupils likely to achieve C or D grades.

Instead it set out on a different route. As Ron Featonby explained: “I thought it was important that every child should sample some element of pre-vocational education, no matter how high attaining they were. I wanted to show children there were other routes into higher education or employment.”

In the past two years the school has offered pupils the chance to take units of foundation general national vocational qualifications in business, art and design, leisure and tourism, and health and social care. They have proved popular and are taken by more than a quarter of its 210 pre-GCSE pupils. Pupils feel that the courses are interesting and offer an early taste of vocational study. Year 11 pupils are all doing a mixture of GNVQ units and the credits they accumulate can go towards a post-16 foundation GNVQ , and GCSEs.

Despite the fact that the vocational courses do not influence league-table position the school has spent Pounds 15,000 this year on staff and supply teachers, training, and materials for pre- and post-16 vocational work.

Elaine Rutters, GNVQ co-ordinator, said the school believed every student should experience a vocational element in their curriculum. She said: “We need to provide a common minimum entitlement and to respond to individuals.”

The school has now made a bid to pilot the GNVQ part one courses, which are aimed at 14 to 16-year-olds, and hopes to convince parents and pupils of the parity between this intermediate-level qualification and GCSE - provided the results are used in performance tables in the future.

Staff are convinced the vocational alternative to GCSE and A-level has much to offer in terms of helping some students fulfil their potential - a belief borne out by their performance in the sixth form.

“Post 16, we had seven pupils enter higher education through GNVQ advanced courses. They really were success stories,” she said.

Austin McNamara, Framwellgate’s headteacher, said the school was truly comprehensive despite its middle-class catchment area. “A purely academic curriculum would not fulfil every pupil’s needs,” he said.

“We think there are a number of children currently achieving grade D at GCSE who could end up with two or three Cs, but who will not show up in the league tables.

“If they were to do GNVQ intermediate they would then have five qualifications and this would show up - but this is of secondary importance to us.

“When the league tables came out we were interested to see where we were - it would be hypocritical to say they had no influence at all. But in schools like this, though they do reflect well upon us they still do not tell the whole story.”