GCSE students at Roedean achieved the best ever results this year, the independent girls school said this morning (Thursday 24 August).
They were celebrating today after beating the school’s 2019 grades and achieving the best set of results in non-covid times.
Grade 9 was the most common grade achieved, accounting for 32.1 per cent, and 57.7 per cent of all grades given were either an 8 or a 9.
Fourteen pupils were awarded nine or more grade 9s, with a total of 130 between them.
Seven students landed 10 or more grade 9s and one of them even achieved 12 – one of the best sets of results in the country.
With 74.3 per cent of grades awarded at 7, 8 or 9, the students outperformed the school’s 2019 grades by 6 percentage points.
This year, GCSEs were marked in the same way as they were in 2019, much less leniently than last year’s cohort.
Roedean head Niamh Green said: “The students have performed brilliantly and I am so pleased for them, particularly after all they have been through.
“The incredible amount of hard work they put in has paid off and they thoroughly deserve their success.”
Percy Chan scored 12 nines in her GCSEs today, making her one of the highest scoring Year 11s in the country.
Percy, from Peacehaven, was speechless as she opened her envelope to reveal she got 9s in biology, business, chemistry, Chinese, design technology, English literature, English language, further maths, geography, maths, physics and Spanish.
She said: “I just didn’t think I was going to get all 9s, particularly after seeing all the stories in the press about the harder marking this year. I came to Roedean in year 10 from Hong Kong and although I knew how to speak English I was not used to speaking it all the time so that was quite tough getting used to that and studying at the same time.”
“My family are delighted. They knew I would do well but I don’t think we guessed it would be all 9s. It is such a surprise.”
The teenager will now go on to study A levels in maths, economics, physics and graphic design.
Identical twins Gabriella and Olivia Soars celebrated the end of a long wait today when they opened up their GCSE envelopes at Roedean.
The pair, from Eastbourne, said they had celebrated last night because the fact that it was all over was enough!
Olivia said: “We moved schools to Roedean in year 9 which could have been disruptive but the school made it an easy transition. But then of course there was covid. I found that really hard because I am a people person and I work better face to face. But it turned out fine – despite what we read in the press!”
Gabriella said: “I was worried about going into the GCSE years what with all the disruption we have had but the school made it smooth for us. And then when we found out that there was going to be 2019 style marking, the school always marked our mocks using that system so that has helped us too.”
Multi-instrumentalist Galina Baxter’s dream of playing in West End musicals just got a bit closer after she bagged nine grades 7-9 at GCSE.
The talented teen who attends Roedean School managed to study for her exams as well as playing in the National Youth Music Theatre where she plays clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax and flute.
Galina said: “It’s my ambition to play in the pit orchestra in the West End and I hope to go to a conservatoire after my A levels in music, politics and geography.
“It’s not been an easy ride these last few years – everyone has had covid at some point and of course the classroom experience has been so different when we had to do online learning. But everyone worked their absolute socks off and it has worked out ok.”
