Students at Highbridge’s King Alfred School are this week celebrating a set of impressive GCSE results but the head teacher says nationwide changes to the exams have ‘significantly impacted’ the school.
It was announced on Thursday (August 21st) that 54% of pupils at the school had achieved the headline figure of 5 or more GCSE grades at C grade or above including English and Maths.
The school saw some tremendous individual results with 17 students achieving six or more of the highest grades A*/As and distinction*/Distinctions.
Headteacher Andy Owen told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “We are delighted with these results which reflect the hard work and outstanding commitment of our Year 11 students.”
“However, without any question the changes made by the Secretary of State for Education nationally to make certain GCSE subjects harder and the punitive discounting rules for early entry have significantly impacted on the school.”
“We continue to base our entry policy on what we believe is in the best interest of our students and not league table performance.”
“I’d like to thank our parents, our staff and our partner primary schools that all play such an important role in the education of our young people.”
The top performers this year included Alex Dermanis 7A*s/1A/1Dis, Amy Rickwood 4A*s/4As/1Dis (Dis* in AS ICT), Evie Andrews 3A*s/7As/1Dis, Jessica Pelling 3A*s/6As/1Dis, Sophie Daymond-Heuze 2A*s/9As/1Dis and Ben O’Halloran 2A*s/6As/1Dis (B in AS History).
The top achievers also included Gemma Dade 2A*s/4As, Thrinayani Ramakrishnan 1A*/7As/1Dis*/1Dis, Sam Richards 1A*/6As/1Dis (C in AS History), Rory Edwards 1A*/5As, Andrew Duncan 1A*/4As/1Dis*, Emily Cook 1A*/4As/1Dis, Charlie Hughes 6As/1Dis*/1Dis (A in AS History), Julia Hale 5As/1Dis*, Emily Bailey 8As
Elizabeth Clark 6As/1Dis, and Rory Shadbolt 6As/1Dis.
The school also offered its congratulations to several other students who far exceeded their target grades. These were Evie Andrews (13 grades above target), Natalya Peach (11) Mark Gumble (10), Luke Prior (9), Alex Hazelton (8), Alex Dermanis (7), Joshua Field (7) and David Dickson-Bell (6).
Pictured: The celebrating King Alfred School pupils (Photos: Simon Francis)
