For the second week running, Heanor Gate Spencer Academy’s students have celebrated some fantastic results at both GCSE and in Level 2 vocational courses.
Mr Jones, Senior Vice Principal, said ‘I am so proud of all of our amazing students and the grades they have achieved. As I stated last week, it has been an incredibly tough journey for this set of young people who showed a phenomenal attitude during the Covid-19 pandemic. For this set of students in particular, the physical time away from school seemed to really help develop their academic maturity and our ‘Step Up, not Catch Up’ initiative gave them a great boost at the start of their Year 11 studies.’
As with last week’s Year 13 cohort, these students were the first to sit formal examinations since the summer of 2019 and the students were forced to study for much of their early GCSE programmes in the middle of national restrictions. The results appear to be really strong, with special mentions for some of our curriculum areas, including ‘science trilogy’, English language and modern foreign languages. The percentage of our students achieving a strong pass in the core subjects is higher than both our internal results and the national average in 2019, when examinations were last sat.
Mr Jones went on to comment that – ‘our outcomes are incredibly strong and really are testament to the collective improvements we have made over recent years. A huge focus for us, especially relevant given the current climate, has been the performance of our most disadvantaged students. We are delighted that our disadvantaged students performed better than ever, with a rise of 12% achieving a strong pass and a rise of 9% achieving a standard pass compared to 2019. Individually, success comes in many different forms, and at Heanor Gate we rightly celebrate all of those successes equally – whether it be the students who achieved the top grades, students that overcame personal adversity to secure passes in their core studies, or the students who found school difficult but who persevered and completed their courses. Every single Heanor Gate student should be immensely proud of themselves. As I alluded to last week, the most important thing with any results day is that our young people secure the grades they need to move onto their intended destinations. I am confident that with the grades achieved today, every one of our young people will be able to move on to their chosen pathway in September, and in the midst of a very busy sign up day, recruitment into our sixth form looks really strong. I would like to echo my sentiments from last week and publicly thank all of the amazing staff at our academy that have worked tirelessly to prepare our students for today. The relentless dedication shown towards our young people is something that we, as an academy, are extremely proud of. The hours of commitment, not only during the school day, but during morning sessions, evening sessions, during the holidays or at weekends, is a reflection of how passionate and authentically brilliant they are. Congratulations once again to all of our students, you are uniquely amazing and we are proud of all of you.’
