Independents keep standards high

INDEPENDENT schools in the Henley area celebrated another excellent year of GCSE results by their pupils.

The vast majority of year 11 students achieved at least five passes at grades 9 to 4, which are the equivalent of A* to C under the old marking system.

Nationally across England, 90.9 per cent of students at independent schools achieved grade 4s and above compared with 68.5 at state comprehensive schools.

At Queen Anne’s in Caversham, 96 per cent of pupils achieved five or more passes at level 4 or above, including English and Maths, the same as last year.

The proportion of students who achieved five or more passes at grade 7 or better was 67 per cent, which is up from 60 per cent in 2023.

Ottie Kelly, 16, from Wargrave, achieved three 7s and five 8s in maths, English literature, English language, PE, geography, biology, physics and chemistry.

She waited until she got to school to check her results and will now study for A-levels in business, psychology and PE.

Her mother, Georgina, said: “I am absolutely thrilled for her and very relieved, so she can go off now to Reading Festival and have a brilliant time. She worked her socks off so I’m very proud of her.”

Ella Macdonald, 16, from Caversham, scored six 9s and three 8s, and battled illness to get the grades she needed to study A-levels in Spanish, biology and chemistry.

She said: “On the day of my Spanish exam I was really ill but I still managed to go in and I did it. I did fall asleep in the exam hall, but I managed to get an 8 still.”

Ella said the sacrifices she had to make throughout her study were worth it when she got her results. She said: “I have had to take some time off swimming, which was probably the hardest part. Normally I train about 20 hours a week but I started doing one-hour sessions instead of two so I could get out and revise for an hour, which paid off.”

Her mother, Katie, said: “She’s very balanced and she’s very diligent, she works really hard so it’s actually been very easy for her.”

Lucy Green, 16, from Shiplake, scored two 9s, six 8s and one 7 and will now study A-level geography, politics and biology. In the meantime, she will be celebrating with friends at the Reading Festival.

She said: “I found revising quite difficult because I had to balance it with my rowing, for which I’m on a high-performance program. Training is about 20 hours a week but overall it was okay. I think did pretty well and so I’m quite happy.”

Eleanor Biles, 16, from Caversham, achieved nine 9s and one 8. She took her maths GCSE early, in November, so she could do further maths this year. She achieved 9s in both. She will study A-level maths, further maths, English and music next year.

She said: “I’m happy with it, I’m very relieved with what I got. In the months going into the exam, I changed the way I was working and put in more effort. I was mostly thinking about how I’d feel today.”

Mary Briscoe, 16, from Caversham, who plays cricket for the Berkshire Women’s 1st team, achieved three 9s, four 8s and two 7s in religion, biology, chemistry, physics, arts, English language, English literature, maths and PE.

She said: “I was kind of expecting more towards the 7s and 8s so it was good that I was able to secure three 9s.” She will go on to study A-level PE, business and psychology.

PE teacher Jane Evans said: “I looked at the results and just couldn’t believe it, considering how hard it is to get a 9 in PE. They’re really, really hard
workers in this cohort. Some years you kind of have to drag them along but these guys just worked their butts off.”

Headteacher Elaine Purves said her pupils had performed brilliantly. She said: “As a group, they’re one of our best results ever. These students work so hard and they’re so committed to their studies. We’re really, really proud of them.”

At The Oratory School in Woodcote, 84 per cent of pupils achieved five or more passes at grade four and above, including maths and English. It was 90 per cent last year. This result does not include a number of international students who did not sit the English GCSE.

The proportion of students who achieved five or more passes at grade seven or better was 20 per cent. In English and maths, 15 per cent of students achieved a grade seven or better.

Algie Nunes-Carvalho, 16, from Woodcote, achieved two 8s, four 7s and two 6s but will be appealing his Spanish mark, in which he received a 7, and his religious studies mark, in which he received a 6. He said: “I did quite a lot of revision and did quite well but I did a little bit worse than I expected because the grade boundaries were tough.” He will continue to do his A-levels in maths, economics and Spanish at Burford School.

His mother, Sophie, said: “He has always been a very dedicated boy and has worked really hard to get to where he is. He spent hours and hours revising but I think they’re going back to pre-covid marking and getting tougher.”

Yuvraj Gakhar, 16, from Caversham achieved seven nines and four eights. He will continue at The Oratory to study A-levels in maths, further maths, economics and chemistry.

“It’s been a good day”, he said. “My favourite subject was maths. I did around an hour a day of revision at the start of the year, then when it came to the end of term, I did about two or three hours.

“I would like to go somewhere and do economics maybe afterwards, but I’m not sure where yet.”

Headteacher Julian Murphy said: “I’m absolutely delighted. Obviously, it looks like boundaries have gone up, but we’ve had a great year, as one would expect and loads of individual success stories. I think the key thing is my profound thank you to the students and the teachers for their hard work.”

Shiplake College reported its best ever set of GCSE results outside of the pandemic years with the overall percentage of top 9 and 8 grades increasing from 14 per cent to 17 per cent.

Ninety-three per cent of pupils achieved five or more passes at level 4 or above, slightly down from 95 per cent last year.

The proportion of students who achieved five or more passes at grade 7 or better was 31 per cent, again slightly down on last year’s 33 per cent.

Will Tavinor, 16, from Henley, achieved 9s in maths and further maths, eights in English literature and language and a 9/8 in combined science. He will now study A-level art, maths, further maths and physics at the college.

He said: “I felt pretty relieved to be fair, more so that there was no more stress worrying what it might be.”

Zac McConkey, 16, from Watlington, achieved seven 9s, two 8s and a 7. He said: “I felt pretty good about it. I was very surprised. English had always been my hardest subject. I had really good teachers so that helped.”

Headmaster Tyrone Howe said: “I always feel a bit nervous beforehand but, once again, it was just a real sense of celebration of joy and our pupils have performed really well. They have worked very hard. There were lots of smiles on faces which put smiles on our faces so that’s a good result at the end of the day.”

The proportion of students who achieved five or more passes at grade seven or better was 73 per cent and 68 per cent of year 10 pupils who took RE a year early, achieved grades of 8 or 9.