Grades go up at Bootham School

Students at Bootham School were celebrating improved GCSE results today, with grades up from last year on all usual measures.

Over 50% of passes earned a grade 9-7 (the equivalent of the old A*/A grades), with over half of biology, English literature, history, Latin, maths, music and physics students scoring top grades.

Fifteen students (over 21% of the cohort) achieved at least nine Grades 9-7.

Qiu Qiu Chen, Jake Chong, Henry Elsome and Jimmy Zhang secured 11 each; Milo Gilderdale McMullen, Alice Kuylenstierna, Edward Smith, Emily Watson and Fu Yi Xu 10 apiece; and Sam Blackman, Charlotte Collinson, Claudia Heard, Finley Richardson, Yvonne Rong and Evan Shelton, 9.

Headmaster Chris Jeffery said:

• We congratulate our students -and the dedicated teachers who worked so hard to prepare them for these really challenging exams- on their great success.

  As always, these results only show the final part of the picture of that success: they hint at the effort, dedication and sometimes sacrifice that our young people have brought to their preparation, but can never tell the important stories of those who have overcome real personal or learning difficulties, battled mental health issues, or made terrific improvements to achieve results they didn’t think possible.

  We all need to remember on days like today that success isn’t just about Grade 9s, however right it is that schools want to celebrate those.
  

Mr Jeffery added: “At Bootham we will never make GCSE or even A Level success the be all and end all of the education we offer, however well our young people score.

“As a Quaker school, we remain completely committed to seeing our purpose as being far more about what they do with their exam results to make the world around them better, than merely the results themselves.”