A NEW top grade in the national A-level exams has inspired Ashbourne students to achieve top marks this year with the school seeing a 99 per cent pass rate.
The A* was introduced to the exam system this year and 30 sixth formers at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School (QEGS) have made the grade.
In a record-breaking year for the Ashbourne school, student Catherine Bunting came out with an impressive five A* grades and is set to read natural sciences at Cambridge in October, while classmate Daniel Keeling will take his four A* and one A pass to the physics department at Oxford.
Anna MacDonald’s three A* grades will take her to King’s College London to read law while three A*s and an A will take Edward Haslam to Nottingham University where he will study economics.
Phillip Banks, Megan Brown, Elise Fearn, James Green, John Knox, Samantha Pendleton, Tom Sanders and Joshua Wilkes all received two A* grades and a further 41 students obtained at least one grade A.
This year also saw the first ever results for a BTec Art course at QEGS and four candidates gained a distinction grade on every unit.
QEGS head teacherr Dr Roger Wilkes congratulated all of the students and staff on the ‘wonderful’ results which he said had taken the pupils seven years of determination and hard work to achieve.
He said: “Every year when the A-level results come out, we are treated to a mournful assessment of falling standards and routine disparagement of state comprehensive education.
“Our experiences at QEGS tell a very different story.”
In newspaper league tables, QEGS was listed third in the scores for comprehensive schools, with most A-level points per student in the Independent newspaper and sixth in Daily Telegraph league tables for grades A* to B.
Almost all of the upper sixth students are placed at university and for those still seeking advice Mr Benn, director of sixth form studies, is available in school.
