With the new GCSE regime acknowledged as the toughest yet, Harrow Way students and staff are still celebrating this morning with another year of outstanding results. As in previous years students excelled in the core subjects. An impressive 74% of students achieved a GCSE grade 9 to 4 in English Language or English Literature, close to 70% achieved a grade 9 to 4 in Mathematics and 73% achieved a GCSE grade 9 to 4 in Combined Science. High grades were also abound within these subjects with an incredible 25% achieving grades 9 to 7 in Combined Science and 21% achieving a grade 9 to 7 in Maths.

With Performing and Creative Arts a hugely important part of the curriculum at Harrow Way and a subject area the school has long been renowned for, there was much delight with a flawless 100% grades 9 to 4 pass rate in Dance, Drama and Art. These subjects also secured high grade passes with 73% achieving grades 9 to 7 in Drama and 61% achieving grades 9 to 7 in Dance.

Over in other curriculum areas, students and staff are celebrating their outstanding results with 100% grades 9 to 4 achieved in Catering, 83% grades 9 to 4 in PE (GCSE/Health and Fitness) 95% grades 9 to 4 in Business Studies, 79% grades 9 to 4 in Media studies, 75% grades 9 to 4 in Health and Social Care and just under 70% grades 9 to 4 in History. Harrow Way’s expertise as a Computing at School lead school was reflected in their Computer Science results with 88% achieving grades 9 to 4.

Commenting on another year of incredible results a very proud Headteacher Michael Serridge said: “This new exam regime is tough! Yet despite a lot of pressure I am immensely proud that our students showed resilience and worked incredibly hard to deliver an excellent set of GCSE results. We are relentless in our pursuit of outstanding teaching and learning, something which has been acknowledged in the forthcoming issue of the Parliamentary Review. I would like to thank all our staff for their commitment and unstinting hard work that has been put into this year’s results, our governors for their encouragement, and our parents for their unceasing support of our aims and ambitions for these wonderful young people.’’

Going on to comment about the importance of student wellbeing during the lead up to and throughout the exams Mr Serridge continues: “Reforms to GCSEs have undoubtedly made the exam process much harder. Students now face four weeks of exams with some sitting as many as 25 papers! Against this backdrop we are very mindful that student wellbeing must be a top priority here at Harrow Way and this will feature even more in the curriculum over the coming years.”

There were some stand-out performances with a number of students celebrating a huge haul of high-grade passes including Joel Hesslegrave with seven grade 9s, and a grade 8. Chloe Eaton’s results included three grade 9s and three grade 8s. Jessica Tarbart, Lord Odunlami, Annalisa Brown, Grace Farrelly, Nicholas Feder and Jed Trengrove also performed incredibly with a whole raft of 8s and 9s.

Harrow Way’s GCSE success comes as the School has been selected to feature in the highly regarded publication, the Parliamentary Review. Harrow Way is one of a select number of schools from the South East who will be sharing their expertise in the secondary education best practice journal.