Stover celebrates another set of outstanding GCSE and A Level results.
GCSE Top performers
Charlotte Killick, from Kingsbridge, who achieved 7 A* and 2 As
Samuel Ho, a boarding pupil from Hong Kong, who also gained 7 A*, 2 As and 1 B.
Rachel Hannon, from Ilsington, who achieved 6 A* and 4 As
Saxon Mudge from Kingsteignton, who gained 3 A* and 8 As.
100% pass rate at GCSE with an increase in papers gaining the top grades of A* and A. Over 40% of pupils achieved an A* or A in Mathematics. Bucking the national trend, Stover pupils also did very well in Modern Foreign Languages with six Year 9 pupils achieving 5 A* and 1 A.
A Level Top performers
Bobo Chan, from Hong Kong, who took six A Levels, gaining three A*s, an A, B & C.
Alexander Lui, who gained two A*s, an A and a B
Teodora Peevska who achieved an A* and two A grades
Harvey Seale, secured a scholarship to study Music at the Birmingham Conservatoire
after gaining A Levels in Music, Drama and Religious Studies.
82% gaining grades A* to C at A Level, of those grades 33% were at A* or A against the national average of 26.6%.
Stover Principal, Sue Bradley says ‘Once again we are celebrating excellent GCSE & A Level results. I am extremely proud of all our pupils and our dedicated staff. We have an impressive clutch of top grades but I am particularly heartened by the results of those pupils who have worked so hard to achieve their individual successes.’
A Word of Caution Regarding Exam Results League Tables
The pupils of Stover School are once again to be congratulated on an excellent set of GCSE exam results in 2012.
At GCSE 79% of pupils attained 5 or more A* to C grades.
Unfortunately, due to regulations under which the DfE league tables are collated, the hard work and success of our pupils is not always fully reflected.
The headline statistic used in League Tables is the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A* to C grades including Maths and English. As a boarding school, we have a proportion of our pupils who come from overseas, for whom English is not a first language. We feel it to be in the best interests of these pupils to enter them for the ‘English as a Foreign Language’ IGCSE rather than the standard English GCSE – but results in English as a Foreign Language are not allowed to be included in the ‘5 or more A* to C grades including Maths and English’ statistic. We do however have to include all our pupils in our figures – even if they have never been entered for standard GCSE English. Effectively this means that some of our GCSE pupils in 2012 were never even eligible for the chosen statistic in the first place – even though their Maths results were extremely good. Indeed, if we discount the pupils who were entered for ‘English as a Foreign Language’, the figure for ‘5 or more A* to C grades including Maths and English’ rises to 79%. A better indication of performance for a school such as Stover is perhaps the average points score – although even this has its limitations.
A second issue is that at Stover, if a pupil really wants to sit a GCSE exam in any particular subject, we will support them in that. Particularly for some of our Learning Support pupils a result of a grade D in English or Maths might be a major personal achievement – highlighting some outstanding application and progress.
In Stover we take pride in always trying to do what is in the very best interests of each pupil, in terms of entering them for exams, and choosing courses of study.