The Hull Daily Mail has helped to improve the GCSE fortunes of the city’s schools and lift Hull off the bottom of the league tables.

Through its Moving On Up education campaign, the paper aimed to support the LEA, teachers, pupils and their parents in improving standards.

And three years after its launch, provisional figures show that this has finally been achieved, with Hull schools notching up a three per cent improvement on last year’s performance.

Commenting on the results, Mail editor John Meehan said: “Our Moving On Up campaign highlighted the desire to transform the city’s educational fortunes. Its primary objective was simple – to focus efforts on climbing away from the bottom of the tables.

“We are delighted that objective has been achieved and that our coverage has played a key part in the success.

“We congratulate the local education authority, teachers, governors, parents and, most of all, the pupils who worked so hard to make it happen.”

As part of its campaign, the paper published practical advice for pupils and their parents as well as producing revision guides which were distributed to 3,000 GCSE candidates.

The paper also held The Great Debate, where a panel from the city’s council answered questions about educational standards from members of the public.