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Today has seen the last selective year group to go through the Guernsey Grammar School pick up their GCSE results. It will be a fully comprehensive school from September.
This year's GCSE students were mainly celebrating after outperforming the 2019 cohort, the last time adjustments were not made for Covid.
“I think nationally we’re expecting results to be slightly down on 2019 or around that area, this shows just how focussed both our students and our staff have been on making sure their learning hasn’t been affected too much by the disruption,” said Principal Kieran James.
“Obviously, the pandemic has impacted for everybody, but this year with very few adjustments in terms of the exams, it's been pretty much everything back to normal and the students have risen to the occasion, as of the staff, and I think testament to their hard work and their dedication that we've seen lots of smiles this morning.”
Pictured: Mr James was at the Grammar School ahead of 09:00 when students were allowed in to collect their results.
For the first few years of their secondary schooling this cohort had to cope with coming in and out of lockdown, bubbles, and disruption like being taught in classrooms that would not normally be used.
Mr James said they have also had to deal with the reorganisation of the secondary sector as the move to a fully comprehensive system was made.
“They've been resilient, they've shown the importance of focus on hard work and this cohort has absolutely been single minded in making sure that they don't let themselves down and achieve as highly as they can. And they have done that today.”
Most of the students will be going on to study at the Sixth Form Centre.
“Almost all of our students have achieved the grades to go into level three study whether it's in the sixth form here, which the vast majority are doing either on our IB or A-level programmes, or at the College of Further Education. There are a small number who have chosen to go into either employment or apprenticeships as well, for a variety of reasons.”
Erin Jackson said it was only this morning that the nerves kicked in.
Her results mean that she can go on to study geography, environmental sciences and one other yet to be decided A-level and an EPQ and core maths with the aim of a career working in the areas of environment and conservation.
Pictured: Erin Jackson and Louisa Hughes.
“I was happily surprised,” she said. “My results were quite different to what I thought, some were a lot better, some were slightly worse, but overall, I'm really happy.”
The talk about tougher marking added extra pressure Erin said.
“Hearing how the A level grade boundaries were, it was quite a shock for the A-level students, so I was worried that GCSEs would be similar, but it looks like they've stayed pretty similar.”
Louisa Hughes wants to work in the medical profession. She is going on to study biology, chemistry and history at A-level, EPQ and core maths.
“It went better than I thought it would today,” she said.
Covid disruption "undoubtedly" a factor in GCSE results
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