Bedminster Down School Celebrates Record GCSE Results

Students and staff at Bedminster Down School are celebrating record GCSE results today: over 60 per cent of its students achieved five GCSEs at grades A*–C or equivalent.

The school is awaiting confirmation of a few results but expects the final pass rate at that level to be 62 per cent, which will be its best ever results by a significant margin. Last year’s pass rate was 47 per cent.

The school’s figures including English and maths GCSEs also showed a marked improvement, with 39 per cent achieving five GCSEs at grades A*–C, up from 30 per cent last year.

Harry Marsland, Assistant Head at the school, is responsible for overseeing the exams and administration.

He said: “This has been a good year, so we were confident that the results would be good, but they are even better than we expected.

“We have a very positive ethos here and the children have a good work ethic – these record results are a testament to the hard work of both the children and the staff.”

Each school is a unique community, of course, and the emphasis at Bedminster Down is on demanding high standards and continuous improvement, and supporting students individually to help them achieve their best. 

The school opened at 8am today for early bird students eager to find out how they had done in their exams. On hand were a team of teachers and two personal advisors from Connexions West of England, there to offer support and advice to those students who needed it, whether they had done better or worse than they expected.

From 9am there was a steady stream of students arriving to collect their results.

Nor did they all arrive empty-handed: ex-student Jake Woodhouse brought in a case of beers as a present to say thank you to one of his teachers, Mr Chaplain, the school’s Director of Achievement.

Jake has already made the transition to the world of work, having obtained a job at a scrap-yard in Knowle during the summer.

As well as GCSEs, students at the school have the opportunity to take vocational courses including Young Apprentices and B-Tec courses, which are equivalent to four GCSEs. During the school week, Young Apprentices spend one day at college, one day at work and three days at school, where they study for GCSEs in maths, science and English.

Other students at the school, which is for 11 to 16-year-olds, plan to go on to further education at places like the City of Bristol College, St Mary Redcliffe Sixth Form Centre, St Brendan’s Sixth Form College and the south west Bristol Post-16 Centre at Ashton Park School.

Amy Taylor is one of Bedminster Down’s students who will be studying A-levels at St Mary Redcliffe. She achieved nine GCSEs at grades A–C and is now looking forward to studying A-levels in Drama, Photography, Law and Physics.

Friends Sean Dewfall and Liam O’Connor anxiously compared results, not that either of them needed to have worried: Sean achieved three As, six Bs and a C, and Liam four As, four Bs and two C grades.

Fellow students Jess McNeil and Bianca Hatcher said their results were a great end to good week, which they had spent at the V Festival in Staffordshire. With GCSEs including three A grades, Jess said she is now looking forward to starting an A-level in photography, also at St Mary Redcliffe Sixth Form Centre.

Congratulations to all the staff and students on their hard work and excellent results!