Some 25,000 school students have received their General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE), the Northern equivalent of the Junior Cert.
Comparisons between results in the North and those in Britain will not be made until later in the week when results from examining boards in England and Wales are published.
A large majority, about 70 per cent, of 16-year-olds sit GCSE exams set by the Northern Ireland board and results are published first because schools in Britain break up and return to school later.
The A-level results, published earlier this month, showed a significant superiority between the performance of Northern 18-year-olds and their equivalents in Britain.
More students achieved pass grades and nearly one-third of all candidates achieved the top grade - well ahead of the 23.8 per cent who did so in England and the 23.9 per cent who were awarded a grade A in Wales.
About 25,000 pupils received the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) which was introduced in 2004 to encourage pupils from less well-off families to remain on at school. It is estimated that up to one-third of these students are continuing their studies thanks to the grant, worth about £30 (€43.50) a week.
Paula Devine of Ark, the social and political study programme jointly run by Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster, said: "Just over one half of those respondents, who said that their families were not very well off, said that having the EMA really did influence their decision to stay on at school.