Teens took GCSEs hours after escape

TEENAGERS from the devastated tower block took their GCSE exams a few hours after they escaped the blaze.

Some students were still wearing their night clothes after fleeing the fire which destroyed their belongings and left them homeless.

Ines Alves, 16, grabbed her mobile phone and study notes as she and her family escaped from their 13th floor flat of Grenfell Tower.

Ines, a pupil at Sacred Heart School in Hammersmith, West London, tried to revise as they waited downstairs. But at 3am the family realised their home was destroyed.

A few hours later she took her GCSE chemistry exam, and is now staying with school friends while she and her parents, Miguel and Fatima, wait to be rehomed.

She said: ‘Considering what had happened I think the exam went okay. I want to do A-level chemistry and I need an A in science so I was thinking of my future when I decided to sit the exam.’ Her proud brother Tiago, who is studying physics at university, said: ‘She had studied so hard for it she was determined she was going to take it.

‘Her school had even contacted the exam board and told her she didn’t have to come in.’

Meanwhile, A-level student Rory Walsh worked through the night helping residents before going to take one of his exams.

The 18-year-old, who lives near the tower, woke in the early hours of Wednesday and joined the relief effort for six hours before going to take his English A-level exam.

He then rejoined volunteers helping to take donations and find shelter for the families left homeless.

Rory, a student at Richmond College in West London, said: ‘I got extra time [for the exam] but I didn’t use it, I just came straight back to help out.’