Five-years-ago, Farah Mahjoub could not speak English. Today the Greenfield Community College pupil has been awarded the highest possible grade in English Literature.
The 16-year-old, who was born in Syria and lived in Jordan before moving to the UK at the age of 11, said she revised two hours every day for several months, “worked hard and asked a lot of questions”.
Now Farah plans to head to Durham Sixth Form Centre where she will take chemistry, mathematics, biology and Arabic A-Levels.
Her aim is to later study medicine at university and then become a surgeon.
Greenfield Community College in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, has 166 pupils in the year group who were eagerly awaiting their GCSE results this morning.
Of those 63.3 per cent got a grade 4 or above in five GCSEs including English and Maths, while 39.2 per cent got a grade 5 or above in five GCSEs including English and Maths.
Executive head teacher David Priestley said he was “absolutely thrilled” with the results which he described as the best results the school has had since at least 2014.
“We’ve got a hugely committed staff that care. Through Covid they’ve retrained to be able to teach online so that these kids have not really had a break in their routine and their education.”
Jaden Dixon, 16, suffered from multiple seizures which led him to miss some of his exams.
However, “everyone in the school and at home was really supportive in making sure I could still get in or find an alternative, so I sat some of my GCSEs at home.”
Jaden will read chemistry, biology and mathematics A-Levels at Durham Sixth Form Centre.
Katy Henderson, 16, said the lead up to the exams was quite “hectic” but said the school did a lot to help her with her confidence in revising.
She said she was happy and “relieved” with her results and now plans to go to Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College.
There she will study philosophy, religion and ethics, sociology and history A-Levels, and then head on to university, with the ultimate aim of becoming a primary school teacher.
Taylor Bowen, 16, was pleased to receive two 9s and two 8s, and said he did “a lot better than I thought I was going to do”.
He plans to study mathematics, chemistry and biology A-Levels at Durham Sixth Form Centre.
Top achieving pupil Keira Lau, 16, got three 9s, five 8s a seven.
Keira studied hard for her exams and suggested that anyone else preparing for their exams should not “leave your studying until the last minute”.
She will now go on to study biology, chemistry, mathematics and further mathematics at Durham Sixth Form Centre.
Later she hopes to study a medicine and surgery degree, because “I feel like it’s always been my calling”.
Sam Duckett, 16, said he had no nerves in the lead up to getting his results and throughout the study and exam period kept his cool. His maths teachers were able to host further mathematics lessons at lunch time which enabled him to achieve an additional GCSE grade.
Later this year he will begin studying mathematics, further mathematics, computer science and physics A-Levels at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College.
A Durham County Council project is supporting the design a new school building, which is set to open on the same grounds in 2025.