The number of Leicester secondary schools rated as "good" or "outstanding" has risen in the past year.
But the information, released by Ofsted yesterday, also showed the number of county secondaries with a top rating fell over the same period.
Ivan Ould, Leicestershire County Council's spokesman for children and young people, blames the fall on changes in how the education watchdog rates schools.
He said: "There has been a change in the Ofsted regime that has made it harder for schools to achieve 'outstanding' ratings so it's not necessarily saying standards have slipped.
"There isn't any complacency at County Hall and we will be looking into the reasons why this has happened, but it's quite possible schools are performing at the same levels as before."
Overall, county secondaries performed better than those in the city last year, with 30 per cent rated "outstanding" and 49 per cent rated "good".
However, in the previous year, 35 per cent were rated "outstanding" and 43 per cent were rated "good".
County primaries also did better, with 15 per cent rated "outstanding", up from 12 per cent.
Meanwhile, 12 per cent of the city's secondaries were rated "outstanding" last year, up from 11 per cent the previous year, and the number of "good" secondaries leaped to 59 per cent, from 50 per cent.
The figures for city primaries remained constant, with 11 per cent "outstanding" and 48 per cent 'good'.
Vi Dempster, assistant city mayor for children, young people and schools, said: "Since 2007 the number of city schools classed as 'good' or 'outstanding' has risen from 35 per cent to 63 per cent.
"At the same time, the number classed as 'inadequate' has gone down from 9 per cent to 4 per cent.
"The council and schools have been working together with great success to raise standards across the city.
"There is still more work to do, but we are confident that if we continue to work together this rate of improvement will continue and all of our schools will be good schools."
Leicester NUT spokesman Peter Flack said: "In terms of secondary schools, Leicester is better than Derby, Nottingham and Northampton and is continuing its progress. Primary schools are making steady progress, too.
"The county areas always tend to do better than the cities, where there is more deprivation, but I think the city can catch up with the county."
Taking primary and secondary schools into account, the number rated "good" or "outstanding" rose by one percentage point to 63 per cent.
Four per cent of all schools were "inadequate" – which has not changed since last year but is an improvement on five years ago.
