Best-ever GCSE grades follow A-level successes in vintage summer

Best-ever GCSE grades follow A-level successes in vintage summer

Almost seven out of every ten GCSEs sat at QE were awarded the top A* grade, with 99.3% of examinations at the school graded A*-B.

The results are QE’s best-ever performance at GCSE. They follow last week’s excellent A-level results, which saw it ranked as the country’s top school in league tables published by The Times and Daily Telegraph.

“This has proved to be a vintage summer for our school and I congratulate both boys and their teachers on their success,” said Headmaster Neil Enright.

“Although QE is a competitive academic environment, it is emphatically not an ‘exam factory’. We strongly encourage our boys to take advantage of the abundant extra-curricular opportunities we offer so that they explore their interests both academically and in areas such as sport and the arts.

“We also place a high value on helping boys develop character attributes such as self-control, empathy and optimism, laying early the foundation for success in later life.”

The 1,201 A* grades at the school represent 67.8% of the total – 4.5% up on 2014 and the fourth consecutive year in which the proportion has topped 60%. More than a fifth of boys achieved straight A*s across their GCSEs.

All 179 boys in Year 11 achieved at least five GCSEs at grades A*-C. In total, 99.4% of QE boys achieved the Government’s benchmark English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) measure, which requires a grade C or above in English, Mathematics, History or Geography, Science and a foreign language. In June, the Government announced that all pupils starting Year 7 this year will have to take the Ebacc subjects when they reach their GCSEs in 2020.

Amid strong performances by all the departments, the results for Mathematics, the sciences and Geography were truly exceptional:

    • Mathematics was taken by all boys and passed at A* by 170 of them, or 95%
    • A high proportion of QE boys take three individual sciences. For both Biology and Physics, 98.3%, or 117 pupils, achieved A*, while 96.6% of Chemistry GCSEs (115 boys) were graded A*
    • Eighty-two of the 99 geographers, or 83%, achieved the top starred grade.

Teenagers celebrate GCSE success across Barnet, Barnet Times, Thursday 20 Augus 2015

Top Boys’ State SchoolThe Times, Friday 21 August 2015

Top Boys’ State School for % A*-AThe Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 August 2015