GCSE Results: New results, more remarkable stories

In the first year in which all GCSE results at Berkhamsted School have been on the new numbered scale, our pupils have been celebrating their academic achievements as in previous years. Stories from the national media have suggested that fewer than 1,000 students across the country will gain a clean sweep of top grades, and we are happy to have one pupil, Grace Bennett, who has attained this remarkable achievement with ten 9s.

Combining studies and broader interests

Berkhamsted’s successful GSCE pupils have been combining their academic studies with a very broad range of extra-curricular activities helping them to learn core values and life skills which will benefit them at Sixth Form and beyond. Our two lead actors in this year’s school musical ‘We Will Rock You’: Tegan McBride and Ollie Brown, have each obtained two 9s, three 8s, five 7s & one 6 and five 9s, five 8s and one 7 respectively. Ollie has also won a Rank Foundation Leadership Award, given to a very small number of UK students who have outstanding leadership potential to support his entry to Berkhamsted Sixth.

Thomas Fuller joined Berkhamsted Boys during the autumn term of Year 9, with a starting date mid-term this meant he had some catching up to do.  He has gone on to achieve more than he expected and was really pleased with his results today thanking his teachers, tutors and friends for all their support in enabling him to reach his full potential with ten 9s and one 6.  In addition, Thomas also managed to gain the top grade (A) in his FSMQ additional mathematics exam – something that he was incredibly proud of.

The cohort who aimed high

In all, just under 20% of grades at Berkhamsted were the new ‘9’ grade and just under 99% of grades were at grades 9-4 (A*-C in old terms).

Richard Backhouse, Principal of Berkhamsted Schools Group explains more about our approach to education: “Often people comment that Schools focused on a rounded education are softer on exam performance.  We aren’t.  A rounded education is one in which students learn to apply the determination they can find in themselves in the last 15 minutes of a team game to a complex French translation or applying the perseverance that twenty simultaneous equations require to their daily oboe practice.  It is the transferable nature of these skills, habits and dispositions between different areas of school activity which our pupils have displayed in their academic attainments today.

“We use Building Learning Power – based on Professor Guy Claxton’s work on how the human brain learns – to help pupils not just to understand how to pass GCSE exams, but how to analyse their own learning profiles, how to diagnose their own development needs, and how to make sure these needs are met.  By habituating this at school, we make sure they carry on doing it afterwards. From these pupil stories, you can see how underpinning academic results are the character traits which they have learnt during their time on the stage, as a team or outdoors: resilient, innovative, ambitious, compassionate, adventurous and motivated.  At Berkhamsted, our Year 11 pupils this year have demonstrated how we develop remarkable people and I for one cannot wait to see what this cohort will achieve next.”

Open Events 2019

Berkhamsted School will hold an Open Event at Berkhamsted Sixth on Thursday 26 September from 17:00 – 19:00, and an Open Event at Berkhamsted Boys and Berkhamsted Girls on Friday 27 September from 15:00 – 18:30.

Please call Admissions for more details on 01442 358001 or visit https://www.www.berkhamsted.com/contact/