GCSE Results 2023

The headline figure is that depending on how you count, somewhere between 72% and 73% of the girls' GCSE results were graded 7 to 9, or what would have been A/A* grades in old money. All the girls achieved the national target figures, with just one GCSE out of 134 taken marks below the equivalent of a C.

While every school is different and all have their strengths and weaknesses, from what we gather the girls have done very well as compared with cohorts in similar schools, and seem to have bucked the national trend for private schools' results to be the ones most affected by the general national reduction in top grades.

Perhaps greedily, we have asked for quite a lot of papers to be remarked. In some cases this is because girls may be just one point below the next grade boundary (in two girls' cases they are one point below in 3 or more subjects…), and in a few cases we are looking at remarks across a whole subject where the grades just do not ring true to staff with decades’ of experience.

(In defence of the exam boards, who must have to recruit literally hundreds and perhaps thousands of examiners every exam season, achieving consistent marking in every paper, whether the examiner is in Cornwall or Carlisle, must be an enormous challenge)

Although we are delighted with the girls' achievements, one of the huge fringe benefits of working in a very small school is that one can appreciate the journey that each girl goes on, more vividly than might be realistic in a bigger school. The girls with the highest sets of grades, in most cases, began their journey in Reception, but even in a relatively short space of time, some of the girls' progress led them to achieve to an average of 3 grades higher than their benchmarking predictions suggested they should get. When schools describe themselves as scoring highly in value-added measures, this is what they are referring to, but 3 grades’ uplift is quite something, I would like to congratulate my colleagues, and of course the girls themselves, for this particularly special realization of potential.

Whatever their grades, we wish the girls every good fortune as they move into the the final phase of their school education, and wherever they are headed, the real reward for us is if they are as proud of themselves as we are of them.