A Level Results 2005

20 August 2005

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Students at BRGS continued to achieve new records at A level this year.

The number of students climbed to a new high of 228. They passed 833 A level exams out of 844 at grades A to E and, in addition, passed 340 exams at AS level. The pass rate was 98.7%. Nearly half the students joined BRGS sixth form from other schools and many of them have done exceptionally well.

464 results were at grades A and B, a rate of 55% which is the highest in the school's history.

The average UCAS points per student was 390 points which was a new record. This means that the average result achieved by students at BRGS has more than doubled in the last 15 years

46 students achieved the excellent standard of three or more passes at grade A. This was 20% of the year group; the national figure is that 5% achieve three passes at grade A.

The headmaster, Mr Marc Morris, said "Once again this year parts of the media have been saying that A levels are getting easier and that they are becoming worthless because of the high pass rate. This shows that they do not understand the system. It is designed to encourage students to work hard and it rewards what they do well. The important point is that they study at least four subjects in the first year and then they can drop one for their second year. That is why the pass rate is so high; students usually drop the subject they are doing worst at. There is no point spending two years studying and then getting no qualification at the end of it. It is a good thing that so many are doing so well.

We are very proud of the standards our young people have achieved this year. It has been very much a team effort by many schools as nearly half of our students came from other secondary schools in the surrounding area who gave them an excellent foundation at GCSE level on which to build their A level studies. The dedication of our teachers and pastoral staff cannot be praised enough; they do make a big difference to young lives."

Outstanding results came from the following; the numbers show how many grade A passes the students achieved, a half being at AS level:
5½ Tashmeeta Ahad Rachel Burgess 5 Marie Buckel Jesse Duggal Samantha Haigh Zosia Rodak Ben Smith Sarah Sweeney 4½ Emma Barrow Martin Bracewell Poppy Cooper Christopher Green Hannah Lythgoe Jennifer Morton Oliver Regan 4 Katrina Bishop Ruby Burrow Rachel Clarke April Harper Rachel Jones Adam Taylor	3½ Sabrina Alam Hannah Caygill Hannah Mosley Louise Riley Elizabeth Silkstone 3 Elizabeth Armstrong Natasha Brown Paul Byrne Katherine Gledhill Richard Haworth Mark Hawthorne Tessa Hull Kathryn Lord Dominic McCann Sarah Munt Lindsay Parkinson Emily Pepperday Jeremy Pierce Carrie-Ann Roberts Charles Robson Lisa Stannard Thomas Sykes James Tattersall Elizabeth Terry Stephen Zsigmund

The results mean that six students will enter Oxbridge next year.

These six all obtained the top grades they needed in order to claim the places they had won at Oxford or Cambridge University. Their details are as follows:

L-R: April, Poppy, Jen, Jesse and Tashmeeta

Tashmeeta Ahad reading Medicine at Newnhan College, Cambridge
Poppy Cooper reading Archaeology & Anthropology at St Hilda’s College, Oxford
Jesse Duggal reading Geography at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
April Harper reading English at Exeter College, Oxford
Jennifer Morton reading Law at Selwyn College, Cambridge
Adam Taylor reading Engineering Science at Pembroke College, Oxford,

Commenting on the results Director of Sixth Form Trevor Elkington said, “We are enormously proud of the achievement of all of our students, but clearly winning at place at Oxford or Cambridge is a stunning success and we offer our congratulations to the students involved. It is interesting to note that whilst three of the successful students came right through BRGS since Year 7, three – Tashmeeta, Poppy and Jesse – joined us at the beginning of their sixth form from other local schools who must share in the credit for this success.”