Teens celebrate their GCSE success in Retford

Students at Retford Oaks and Elizabethan High were celebrating on Thursday as they opened the envelopes to unveil their grades.

At Elizabethan High School Bethany Ross, from Everton , was celebrating after finding out she had achieved 12 A* grades.

“I’m just so happy that all my hard work has paid off,” said the 16-year-old.

“I was predicted these grades and it was a lot of pressure to try and get them and I was quite worried that I wouldn’t.”

She is now going on to Retford Post 16 Centre to study chemistry, biology, physics and maths.

The Goacher family from North Wheatley were also celebrating after triplets Mary, John and Robert all achieved top grades - which included 10 A*s and various A to C grades.

Katie Stasiewicz joined the school when she moved to Bircotes from Poland several years ago, and spoke very little English. She was over the moon when she discovered she has achieved A to Cs in every subject including four A*s.

She said: “It’s great, better than I expected. I’m going on to the Post 16 Centre and then hopefully university.”

“I wanted to be a primary school teacher but I am going to look into nursing now.”

Alicia Mitchell, from Gateford in Worksop is one step closing to her dream of becoming a doctor after she achieved seven A*s and five As.

“I’m over the moon, I can’t believe what I’ve got,” said the 16-year-old. “I’ve been up since 4.30am - I couldn’t sleep because of the nerves.

Headteacher Lynn Kenworthy was delighted with the results.

She said: “We are still working on the overall statistics. The school ICT network is undergoing a complete upgrade this summer and we have been unable to download all the results as yet.”

“Students are able to collect their own results but, as we are working manually from paper copies, it is taking longer than usual to do the overall summaries.”

“We can see from the paper copies that 100 per cent of students achieved qualifications.”

“This was a hard working year group and we wish them continued success as they move onto the Post 16 Centre or further education.”

Over at Retford Oaks the results were equally as pleasing.

More than 83 per cent of students achieved five or more A* to C grades, with more than 49 per cent achieving five or more A* to C grades including English and maths.

Principal Dave Gibson said: “This is a fantastic set of results. To have achieved another record set of results this year, up seven per cent on last year is the result of the hard work of all of the students, in partnership with teachers and parents.”

“They should be proud of what they have achieved as a result of these efforts and their success.”

“As a new Academy from September, these results give us a strong position to move forward from in the future to reach our goal of being an outstanding school.”

Among the top performers were Joseph Sharpe from Retford who managed to get five A*s, three As, four Bs and two Cs and Kayleigh Brewer, from Retford who got the equivalent of 16.5 GCSE passes at A* to C.