The figures are published on a new website set up by the Scottish Executive to allow parents to learn how well or how badly their child’s school is doing.

This replaces the league tables system and includes a variety of new information, such as truancy rates, what percentage of pupils go on to university and how many pupils quality for free meals.

It can be found at www.parentzonescotland.gov.uk.

The average exam scores for Dundee’s ten state secondaries are below the national average.

This confirms the city still has some way to go in its efforts to drive up performance levels.

Only 21% of Dundee pupils passed at least five Standard grade exams at the top Credit level, compared to 33% nationally.

It was a similar story with Highers, with 15% gaining at least three passes (nationally 22%) and only 6% gaining five or more passes (nationally 9%).

Only Grove Academy and Harris Academy were above the national average in all three measures, with Grove’s score the higher.

In fact, only a couple of other schools across the country saw similar increases in Higher passes to Grove in 2003, compared to the previous year.

About 40% of its pupils passed at least three Highers (28% in 2002) and 21% of them got five or more passes (8% in 2002).

There was a 7% drop in the number of pupils passing at least five Standard grade exams at Credit level, but its score of 46% was still the highest in Dundee and easily beat the national average.

The 900-pupil school also had one of the lowest truancy rates in the country at just 0.2%.

That compared to a national average of 1.4% and a Dundee average of 1.7%.

That citywide score is, however, one of the lowest for years and has already been welcomed by the city council as the fruits of its continuing efforts to tackle the problem.

One reason for Grove’s strong performance compared to its Dundee neighbours is the relative affluence of Broughty Ferry.

Generally, the better-off an area is, the better pupils who live there do at school.

One of the measures of this is what proportion of a school’s roll qualifies for free meals.

At Grove it is 6.2%, the second-lowest after Lawside Academy and less than a third of city average.

Unsurprisingly, Grove also has the highest proportion of pupils going on to university, 36%.

Harris Academy is just behind on 34%.

They are the only city secondaries to beat the national average of 31%.

Known destinations for school-leavers for Dundee as a whole were — university 24%, further education 28%, work and training 23%.

At the lower end of the scale, on 9% St Saviour’s High had the lowest score in the city for pupils passing five or more Standard grade exams at Credit level.

Braeview Academy was the only school to have a pass rate at three or more Highers to be so small as be statistically insignificant.

It was joined at the five or more Higher rate by Craigie High, Lawside Academy, Menzieshill High and St Saviour’s.

Braeview also had the highest proportion of pupils qualifying for free meals, 35.3%. Lawside had the worst truancy rate at 3.2%.

City council education convener Fraser Macpherson said, “We want parents to have meaningful information and we welcome this new form of publication about schools.

“Obviously we have commented in detail about Dundee’s performance in the recent past and we are pleased to see the steps forward in maths and language within the 5 to 14 curriculum.

“The city council is determined to continue to improve attainment and achievement in Dundee’s schools.”