GCSE students across the Wokingham borough rightly deserve their celebrations today (25 Aug) after yet again achieving higher grades than last summer’s, and therefore bucking the national trend of falling passes.
The borough’s GCSE students have bettered their 2015 grades with 70.6% this year getting five or more A* to C grades, including English and maths, an increase of 2.8% per cent on the borough’s results.
This is also the third year running the borough’s young people have improved their GCSE passes.
National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.
In Wokingham, the majority of schools in the borough have shown improvement.
Individual school results can be found in the GCSE results table (PDF document).
“Congratulations to each and every young person across the borough who received their GCSE results today,” said Cllr Charlotte Haitham Taylor, executive member for children’s services.
“All sorts of planning, thinking and sheer hard work goes into preparing for and sitting these – from students and their parents to all school staff and governors. We’re very lucky to have such superb professionals in our local schools, striving to equip their students with the tools they need for their next steps in life.
“To those students who many not have got the grades they wanted, please don’t be disheartened. There are many other paths you can take to reach your goals. This is just the beginning, not the end.”
This year’s results mark the last time five A* to Cs will used as the benchmark at GCSE under new measures being introduced by central government.
For the first time schools will now be rated according to a new performance measure, known as Progress 8, which charts how well pupils performed compared to their peers nationally based on their Key Stage 2 exams.
School-level results under the new Progress 8 measure will not be available until the Department for Education releases its official calculations later this year. It will be published alongside another metric, Attainment 8.
This year’s results also mark the last of the current format of GSCEs for maths and English, which will be replaced next year by exams graded on a 9-1 scale, with more rigorous content. Other subjects will be replaced over the following two years.
Young people thinking of alternatives to traditional A levels and further education they can find out about job vacancies, events and careers advice at Elevate Wokingham at Wokingham Library or can visit the Elevate Wokingham website.
