Viewing archives for School performance

A remarkable 98.4% of A-levels taken at Queen Elizabeth’s School in 2015 were graded A*-B. The figure represents QE’s second-best performance ever and means that the widely recognised A*-B benchmark figure for the School has topped 98% for three of the last four years.

Almost four out of every ten A-levels taken at QE this year (39.6%) gained the very highest A* grade, compared to 36.7% last year, while 84.9% received A* or A grades (82.4% in 2014).

Congratulating the 142 Year 13 leavers, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “These superb results are a testament to the strength of character of our boys. For achievement at the very highest level, natural intelligence on its own is not enough; qualities such as grit, resilience and self-control are essential, too. These boys have been a joy to teach because they have those attributes.

“I would like to thank my inspirational colleagues for helping the pupils to cultivate such qualities; the achievement of these outstanding examination results should be seen as a by-product of that process of character development. The contribution of our teachers in gently guiding boys to discover where their academic and wider interests lie through encouraging them to take part in extra-curricular opportunities at the School must also be recognised.”

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Top State School – The Daily Telegraph, Friday 14 August 2015

Top State School – The Times, Friday 14 August 2015

Triumph for boys who thrive on competition – The Times, Friday 14 August 2015

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The extra-curricular opportunities include not only clubs and societies, but also the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), which has been for a number of years a popular option among many QE pupils. New figures released this month show that a record number of sixth-formers nationally are thought to have taken the dissertation-based qualification this year in pursuit of university places.

Among the large number of individual success stories at QE is former School Captain, Adam Hilsenrath, who gained an A* for his EPQ project on the impact of Emperor Constantine on Roman Christianity.

Adam will be taking up a place to read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, this autumn, having gained A* grades in English, Maths and Politics, and an A in History. Adam has shown great character by carving out the time to play the piano, get involved in School debating and play rugby, as well as chairing the School’s Jewish Society, writing online for the Jewish Chronicle and, since 2009, running a weekly children’s service at Elstree’s Ohr Yisrael Synagogue.

Milan Kundra earned straight A*s in his four subjects, Biology, Chemistry, German and Mathematics, which not only meets the requirements for a place at Imperial College London to read Chemistry but also means he will receive Imperial’s President’s Scholarship. “The scholarship gives me £3,000 in the first year and also means I become an Ambassador for Imperial,” he says.

Milan chose to complete his EPQ on limb regeneration in urodeles (an animal grouping that includes salamanders) – a “crazy” topic that fascinates him, not least because it is so little understood. “I have always wondered why we as humans cannot regrow limbs, so studying the animals that can is really interesting.”

Looking back on his time at QE, Milan said he found it “extremely rewarding, but challenging”. He certainly threw himself into School life, taking part in clubs for badminton, science, engineering, languages and table tennis, to name just a few.

Analysis of the A-level results reveals that:

• • This year’s results are the School’s second best-ever, beaten only by the fractionally higher 98.5% of A*-B grades achieved in 2012

• • The 98.4% of A-levels gaining A* or B grades in 2015 is up 2.4% from last year’s 96%

• • There were 490 A-level entries this year, compared to 471 last year

• • Mathematics was the most popular subject, with 125 boys taking this subject, followed by Chemistry, which was taken by 73 boys.

 

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A-level results 2015: results from 400 state schools, The Telegraph Online, Monday 17 August 2015

Wait is over for A-level students at QE boys who are heading to Oxford and Cambridge, Barnet Times, Thursday 13 August 2015

Harrow students kick off the celebrations as first round of results flood in, Harrow Times, Thursday 13 August 2015

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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.

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

Top Boys’ State School – The Times, Friday 21 August 2015

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

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The 2016 A-level results at Queen Elizabeth’s are the best ever recorded at the School. In total, 98.8% of the 499 examinations taken were awarded grades A*-B.

The record performance means that the benchmark A*-B figure has now exceeded 98% in four of the past five years.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is very good news and is a just reward for the efforts of our pupils and their teachers. The performance has really been stellar across all subjects and I am very grateful to the bright and capable staff who teach here.

“Our boys are fun to be around and enjoyable to teach. They constantly evince a hunger for intellectual argument and for knowledge; they are keen to stretch themselves. In addition, they are involved in many pursuits outside of lessons, including sport, the performing arts and other non-academic activities.”

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Top State School – The Daily Telegraph, Friday 19 August 2016

Top State School – The Times, Friday 19 August 2016

A-level results 2016: results from 300 state schools, The Telegraph online, Friday 19 August 2016

Barnet pupils excel with impressive A-level results, Barnet Times, Friday 19 August 2016

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The rounded nature of education at QE was also stressed by some of the many successful Year 13 boys. Harry Riley, who gained an A* and two As to secure his first choice of History at Warwick University, said: “You hear a lot about it being an academic school – and it’s true that they know what they are doing with exams – but there’s also a large amount of extra-curricular activity. It’s a very rich educational experience.” And Akshat Joshi, whose three A*s and an A secured his place to read Economics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, said: “Essentially, QE turns you into a well-rounded person, rather than just a walking textbook!”

Mr Enright added that the School placed great value on producing character in its pupils – an emphasis that is to the fore in the new 2016-2020 School Development Plan. Pupil Sahil Handa, who arrived at QE in Year 7 after a period of living in India, agrees. “The school has formed me and my character the whole way through.” He has won a place at Harvard in the US, one of two boys to gain places at Ivy League universities.

In addition, 36 boys secured offers from Oxford or Cambridge, while there were 30 places offered for degree courses in Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science.

Mathematics and Further Mathematics had the highest number of entries, with 121 and 27 respectively.  No mathematicians received a grade lower than B, and in Mathematics, 57 boys – or 47% – achieved an A* grade, while 17 boys – 63% – gained this top grade in Further Mathematics. Mr Enright described these results as “simply stunning”.

This year’s headline figure of 98.8% at grades A*–B outstrips both last year’s 98.4% and the previous record of 98.5%, set in 2012.

All 179 Year 11 pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, reached the Government’s key GCSE benchmark of five A*-C grades including English and Mathematics.  In fact, QE far exceeded the national measure: 98% of pupils secured five or more A*-A grades, while these top two grades also accounted for 89% of all GCSEs taken.

The GCSE results come a week after QE’s best-ever A-level results, which saw the boys’ grammar school once again take the number 1 place in the Times’ and Daily Telegraph’s national league tables of state schools.

99.4% of candidates achieved the Government’s other preferred GCSE measure, the EBacc, by gaining A*-C passes in English, Mathematics, History or Geography, Science and a language.

Nearly 61% of the 1,788 GCSEs taken at QE received an A* this year: 2016 is the fifth consecutive year in which the percentage of examinations awarded this highest possible grade has exceeded 60%.

Congratulating the boys, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This year group is very characterful, with an especially wide range of different interests. They represent very well the broad and varied approach to education here that underpins our academic success. They have worked hard and taken inspiration from the staff.”

Of particular note among the school’s GCSE results was the performance in Mathematics: 174 boys, or 97% of the year, received an A*. The Science results were also extremely strong, with every single Biology candidate awarded A*.

“There were in fact excellent results across a wide variety of subjects, including those for which boys sit the rigorous IGCSE examinations,” Mr Enright added. “Our pupils have laid a very firm foundation for the start of their Sixth Form courses in the new term.

“Both at last week’s A-level results and this week’s GCSEs, I have been thrilled to share these successes with parents as well as the boys. I would like to pay tribute to the great support afforded by our parents to their sons, not only in supporting academic work at home but also through their turning out in considerable numbers to drama productions, concerts, sports events and similar occasions.”

Other noteworthy aspects of this year’s results included:

• • A perfect performance by the first group of boys to learn Spanish, an after-school activity introduced three years ago, when the boys were in Year 9. All seven GCSE candidates gained an A*.

• • In total, 118 boys took separate Science GCSEs. All 118 gained an A* in Biology; in Physics, 116 received A* and two were awarded As; in Chemistry, 112 secured A*s, while six had As.

• • In Year 10, all 14 boys taking the Edexcel Higher Project Level 2 were awarded an A*. This qualification gives pupils the chance to study a topic of their choice in depth.

• • Full GCSEs were taken in 21 subjects, with a further two short-course GCSEs in Religious Studies and PE.

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GCSEs: results from schools in Harrow, Edgware, Mill Hill, Hendon, Finchley, Barnet and Potters Bar – The Barnet Times, Thursday 25 August 2016

The Telegraph – Friday 26 August 2016

The Times – Friday 26 August 2016

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Queen Elizabeth’s School has been named the country’s leading boys’ state school in the Sunday Times’ Parent Power listings.

QE is in second place overall among the 2,000 schools surveyed, narrowly behind The Henrietta Barnett School, the selective girls’ school in Hampstead.

The influential guide is based on the percentage of A-levels awarded grades A*–B and on GCSEs given the top grades of 9, 8 or 7 in the new English and Mathematics examinations, and A* or A in other subjects. QE’s A-level figure of 96.0% was a little ahead of Henrietta Barnett’s, while the GCSE figure, 91.6%, was slightly behind.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “The Parent Power Schools Guide results provide confirmation of the very high levels we reach at QE. I am most grateful to my colleagues on the staff, the boys’ parents, our governors, alumni and the School’s wider community of friends who all contribute so much to create the scholarly and supportive environment in which our boys thrive.”

This summer’s A-level results maintained a long record of performance at the very highest level, with the proportion of A*–B grades having topped 95% in every year since 2005. Sixth-formers took major changes in A-levels introduced by national education reforms in their stride, with 41% of A* grades being achieved – an increase on the previous year.

Similarly, Year 11 boys shrugged off changes including the new GCSE grading system. The 2017 GCSE results were the School’s best ever, with a record 70% of examinations taken achieving the very highest grades of A* or the equivalent 8 and 9.

“Such stellar performances are, of course, impressive and they help our boys gain places at the world’s best universities, but they do not tell the whole story,” said Mr Enright. “In delivering an education at QE, our focus is not narrowly on achievement in examinations but on fulfilling the much broader mandate of our stated mission to “produce young men who are confident, able and responsible’.”

“Through our carefully planned programme of academic enrichment, we seek to foster habits of intellectual curiosity and to nurture an atmosphere of scholarship that takes boys well beyond the confines of the classroom syllabus as they progress through the School. One example of this is the regula r series of academic symposia in which our boys meet up with girls from high-achieving partner schools – including our good friends at Henrietta Barnett – to discuss and debate ideas and contemporary issues.”

QE is also notable for the great emphasis placed on extra-curricular activities beyond the classroom – the School has a wide range of clubs and activities as well as many opportunities in sport, music and drama. “We strongly encourage all our boys to throw themselves into such aspects of School life,” said Mr Enright. “Our recent poetry-themed music concert and our acclaimed performances in the Shakespeare Schools Foundation’s annual festival are examples of our success in the performing arts, while our young sportsmen enjoy UK and overseas tours, as well as a competitive fixture list and inter-House competitions.

“Our aim is that the very bright boys who come here should fulfil their potential and, in so doing, that they should flourish and have fun. To that end, we have developed a strong pastoral care system which helps boys give of their best while also ensuring that we monitor their welfare carefully and that expert assistance is on hand for pupils who start to struggle for any reason.”