Results business for students
FINALLY, THE ENVELOPES HAVE BEEN TORN OPEN AND ALL HAS BEEN REVEALED FOR THOSE ANXIOUSLY AWAITING THEIR GCSE RESULTS...
THE wait was finally over for pupils across Coventry and Warwickshire as they received their GCSE results this morning.
It has been a tough year for both teachers and pupils who have had to adjust to a new grading system in the core subjects.
The new GCSEs are graded from one to nine, rather than the traditional A* to G grade.
English and maths are the first to move across, with other subjects following over the next two years. There were plenty of happy students at Blue Coat school in Coventry and Higham Lane in Nuneaton.
Sadie Newell had done better than expected. She got one 8, three 7s, two As, one 6, three 5s and a 4.
She says she is very pleased with her results and is going on to do an engineering apprenticeship.
“They were harder than I expected, they were more difficult,” she told us.
Sachin Thakrar, who got an amazing eight 9s in his GCSEs and felt “ecstatic” this morning.
He is going on to do his A-levels at Blue Coat and then wants to go to university.
He said: “I didn’t get much sleep last night and was so nervous, but I’m really glad now.”
Blue Coat pupil Abigail Claridge said she was “really really happy” this morning.
“I did a lot better than I thought I had done, they were really really difficult,” she told us. “My mum’s so proud too!” Deputy Headteacher Lisa Henden added: “On the back of these results, the number of students applying to our sixth form will exceed expectations.
“We are particularly pleased that so many of our students have achieved excellent results in what are considered to be the most demanding subjects.”
Anna Cleaver, 16, is the head girl at Higham Lane in Nuneaton.
She was celebrating excellent grades this
morning – seven 9s, two A*s and four 8s. She said: “I can’t believe it, I only thought I would get one 9 to go with the two I got last year. Now I have 8 altogether –it’s crazy.”
She is going to Higham Lane sixth form and then hopes to study medicine at university. A quarter of all their GCSE grades were awarded the highest grades 9-7. 86 per cent of students achieved a grade four or above in English, 75 per cent in maths, 72 per cent in both English and maths and 73 per cent in at least two sciences.
Headteacher Phil Kelly said: “We are delighted for our students, parents/carers and staff with this first set of results under the new-style GCSEs which now apply in most subjects.
“Changes to the grading system make comparisons with previous years difficult in these new qualifications with their more challenging content and a different assessment system to the previous one.”
The proportion of passes at grades A or 7 and above have improved across the UK, up from 20 per cent in 2017 to 20.5 per cent of all passes, the same level as in 2016.
In England, the pass rate rose from 19.8 per cent to 20.3 per cent, the best performance since 21 per cent in 2015.
A big change in England is the new 9 to 1 grade scale for GCSEs, with 9 being the highest grade, which was introduced for English and maths last year and expanded to more subjects this year (including art, geography, history, higher entry language subjects and sciences).
Generally, a grade 7 or above in the new grading system is equivalent to an A or above, with a grade 4 or above equivalent to C and above.
However, there are changes in content, assessment and grading, as well as entry patterns, which mean comparisons should be treated with caution.