A controversial banding scheme for secondary schools introduced by the Welsh Government has judged that all three schools in the Abergavenny?Chronicle's area have some areas of strength but other areas in which they need to improve.

Abergavenny's King Henry VIII School, Crickhowell High School and the Brynmawr Foundation School have all been classified as a Band three schools, which puts them in the middle of the five band rating scheme, details of which were announced late last week.

The rating is based on a wide range of school data including GCSE exam performances, free school meal entitlement and pupil attendance with the best scoring schools awarded Band One status and the worst placed in Band Five.

The scheme marks the first time in ten years that all of Wales' 222 secondary schools being clustered together.

Nearly a third of Wales' 22 local authorities have no school in the Welsh Government's top cluster, while some councils lay claim to as many as 85 per cent in the bottom two bands.

Overall, there are just 29 secondary schools in Band One which are deemed to be "performing well" with good progress across all measures.

Bridgend and Anglesey have the highest proportion of secondaries in the lowest band, while nine Welsh authorities have no Band Five school.

Blaenau Gwent and Pembrokeshire – both the subject of recent damning reports into standards – recorded a large proportion of schools in Bands Four and Five while Monmouthshire has no representation in the top two clusters

Leighton Andrews, the Welsh Government's education minister said: "If we are to drive up standards across the board in Wales we need to know how our schools are performing and banding is at the heart of this.

"It's not about labelling, naming or shaming, or creating a crude league table. It is about putting schools into groups to identify which need our support and which we can learn from.

"You cannot un-invent the Freedom of Information Act - parents and pupils have a right to know what is best in Wales and how their schools measure up."

But teaching unions and other organisations are claiming the new system is effectively reintroducing the school's league table by the back door after they were abolished in 2001.

Within each category, a school's score is modified to take into account the percentage of pupils on the roll eligible for free school meals. This allows for the challenges of running a school in a deprived area. Most of the categories also take into account a school's progress over time, to reward schools that are making improvements in performance.

Schools are assessed on 11 separate criteria within four broad categories.

A spokesman for Monmouthshire County Council said: "The authority has been working collaboratively with all our schools to develop robust action plans to accelerate improvement progress and we expect to see further significant progress in the summer of 2012.

"It is important to note the achievements so far, with encouraging Estyn inspections and performance improvements across many areas. To this end, the authority will continue to support and challenge the existing school leadership teams and governing bodies.

"The banding of our schools is an evaluation tool which we will use to construct action plans for future improvement. Education is, and will continue to be, a stated priority for the council."

Speaking at last week's Monmouthshire's cabinet meeting Councillor Peter Fox said: "A lot of improvements will be made at Monmouthshire's schools thanks to the £80 million funding from the 21st Century Schools initiate.

"It's good news that we can take advantage of a funding flow from the Welsh Government solely for the use of education. We've put in a lot of work into this project and we've been rewarded with one of the biggest successful bids in the country.

"The authority has had a problem with meeting targets in the past but this funding we help us resolve a lot of issues."