SHEBBEAR College’s GCSE results have struck the right note with the school’s overall GCSE pass rate once again comprehensively outperforming the national average.

Already rated in the top 100 schools in the country for Music GCSE, and with a brand new music building about to be opened, it was no surprise that all of the Music results were graded from A*-B.

If anything, the overall performance of the creative artists was even more impressive than the performing artists with nine out of thirteen candidates being awarded A*s in Art and Design.

Once again there was a 100% pass rate in separate sciences with all but four of the grades being A* or A. There were several exceptional individual performances with seven of the relatively small cohort achieving at least ten A*-A grades.

Rob Temple gained nine A*s and is now well placed to follow a career in Medicine, whilst Theo Crookes and Dara Tuncel were both awarded seven A*s. Ten Tors challengers and county hockey players, Heather Mathews and Helen Dalton, added to their already impressive CVs by gaining thirteen A*/A grades between them, whilst Devon County Jazz Orchestra player Ben Parker achieved six A*s and six As.

Kate Wray was the top performing girl with eleven A*/A grades and Oliver Ryder Green also kept a clean sheet of A*s and As.

Headmaster Simon Weale commented: “Having watched my own son cope with GCSE courses this year I am well aware that Year 11 is a time of enormous pressure on our pupils and they have all had to mature to meet the demands of the courses.

“We are essentially an academically non-selective school so in some cases the triumph is to gain the grades that allow pupils to begin vocational courses at college or to begin apprenticeships. Other students have shown by their results that they will be able to apply with confidence to world class universities in two years’ time.

“However, during their time at Shebbear I can safely say that all of our pupils have been exposed to both an ethos and a range of challenges and opportunities that will equip them for success in the outside world when that time eventually comes”.