According to a release from the Ministry of Education on Tuesday, while students from traditional high schools continue to perform better overall than students from non-traditional schools, close analysis of the CSEC data revealed that individual non-traditional high schools have shown improvement in their performance.

The ministry said Jonathan Grant, Old Harbour, Denbigh and Lewisville high schools had more than 70 per cent of their subject entries receiving passing grades.

"In these schools, approximately 50 per cent of the passes were grades one and two - better than 28 per cent of traditional high schools," the release said.

Forty-five per cent of the non-traditional high schools had more than half of their subject entries receiving passing grades, of which more than 33 per cent were of the highest passes (grade one and two).

Meanwhile, the education ministry said more students graduated from high schools last year than in 2007, but the non-traditional institutions recorded a higher percentage of improvement in the number graduating over the figure for 2007.

There was a 60 per cent increase among those graduating from non-traditional schools compared to a 15 per cent increase from the traditional schools and 27 per cent from technical and vocational schools.