Announcement

21 August 2025 

Dear Families

Huge congratulations to all of our young people who have got their results today. The school is very proud of them.  The grades they have achieved will support them to go forward and pursue a range of Level 3 courses.  A big thank you to all of the staff and to you, our  families, who have contributed to and supported those achievements.

Some of our highest achieving students this year include:

Aksel - 99999988888

Rurari- 99999988887

Kyden - 9999998875

Alexandra - 999888876

Emile - 9999888777

Felix - 988888877

Thomas - 9999888876

Cameron - 9999988876

Leo - 988888775

Ida - 98877776

There is of course a lot of hard work over time that has gone into those achievements. 

One particular young person to pick out of the group above is Cameron. Cameron has been studying Mandarin since Year 7 and achieved a Grade 9 in his GCSE having had the opportunity to visit China last year with the school. He has now secured a full scholarship at  Wycombe Abbey International School in Changzhou for his A levels. Well done to Ms Kou You for igniting such passion in him but an extraordinary amount of work, effort and bravery from Cameron to go and study on the other side of the world (we’ve told him that if it doesn’t work out then he definitely has a place back here). 

Also, as I mentioned her brother last week, it seems remiss to not mention Esperance, who like her brother just appeared in school at the start of last year.  She was educated in France and Spain previously and had a good but by no means fluent grasp of English but in just a year, in a whole new education system with content that she has never even contemplated before, she has managed to achieve eight good GCSE passes including a grade 8 and a 9! An astonishing achievement. I wonder how many of us could study Macbeth or Wordsworth’s The Prelude in another language and then write a grade 5 essay about it?

Also, I just wanted to praise a student called Altahir who joined us in Year 10 with no English at all, who came to us after being moved around Europe as an unaccompanied minor from Sudan. He has managed to achieve the passes in his GCSEs required to do a college course that will further build on his two years of schooling with us. On the Year 11 leaving day when the school came out to cheer the Year 11s into their exams, it was Altahir who proudly strode at the front of the year group. When the news is much filled with stories of how people come to this country and the reception they sometimes receive, I am very clear that Altahir and students like him have enriched our school community immensely and will continue to do so. It is always worth remembering that not all success stories are about grade 9s. On a day when the whole system is understandably focussed on percentages and grades, he reminded me of what the education of the whole child looks like. 

For all of our students, whatever the grades, this is a gateway to the next phase of their development. That is one of the key functions of education and schooling, to give young people choices. I think that people often forget what GCSE stands for: a General Certificate of Secondary Education. Now of course is the time for more focused, advanced choices. It was great to see so many of our young people signing on to our Sixth Form today to make that next step. Well done to them all. 

Yours sincerely 

Dominic Bergin