Robert Smyth Academy students celebrate impressive results

Students at Robert Smyth Academy are celebrating impressive results.

Despite the pandemic meaning the students did not sit GCSEs in 2021, this year they completed their A Level exams and were assessed in line with their peers in 2019.

And they have exceeded the outcomes achieved in 2019, the last time similar grade boundaries were applied, with an increase in grades at A*/A.

Students have secured places at universities including Oxford, Imperial College London and Bird College - a conservatoire for performing arts, along with some going on to apprenticeships.

Principal Dan Cleary, said: “Our students should be incredibly proud of the tenacity that they have shown over the last two years in the context of all the challenges that they have faced. I know that for many of them the undercurrent of news that has circulated for the last two weeks regarding national grade deflation and harder assessment boundaries may have made it feel like yet another obstacle to overcome, and yet, they have done fantastically well.

“These excellent results would not be possible without the brilliant efforts of Robert Smyth staff who have supported students through a very challenging era of education. Many of our students did not actually finish their programmes of study in Key Stage 4 due to the significant gaps created in the lockdown of 2020. They are the first and only generation in our lifetime who have been asked to sit their first formally assessed exams at the end of A Level without formative rites of passage behind them and so they are especially worthy of celebration.

“In that context, we are enormously proud of their resilience, grit and hard work as well as their steadfast refusal to be defined by the challenges of their time. That is what makes these achievements even more merit-worthy, and it is what has made this such an ebullient group of young people to work with – they are great representatives of this community, RSA students to the core, and we will miss them all very much.”