Grades have been awarded based on procedures, established by individual schools, taking into account the impact on students’ learning caused by the Covid pandemic; these grades have been carefully calibrated to ensure that students were not adversely affected by the pandemic and have then been reviewed and moderated by exam boards.

Tom Inman, Headteacher, said “I would like to congratulate all of our students collecting their GCSE results this morning.  Obviously, the exceptional circumstances we find ourselves in make today a very different experience to most years. Despite that, we should not take anything away from an amazing year group of young people and the incredible hard work that they have put in, in most cases over the last five years, at Gordano.

“We are as proud of them as we are with any year group of students; indeed more so for the way that they have handled such significant disruption at a crucial time of their education”

Like most schools, the resulting Teacher Assessed Grades show a marginal increase, at all grade thresholds, when compared with previous years.

Mr Inman commented “The unique circumstances of this year has led to a really different set of conditions for the awarding of grades. It is natural that this will mean some change in the results profile for schools, but our focus should be on the way in which our brilliant students have dealt with such adversity, rather than engaging in an unhelpful debate around grade comparison and inflation that does them such a disservice.

“As the curtain closed on an exceptionally difficult year for all of us, I also want to pay tribute to our staff, governing body and parents for their unstinting efforts and support in guiding our students through these very challenging times.

“Our absolute priority now is to support all of our students to secure their next steps, be that staying here at Sixth Form or progressing on to Further Education or an Apprenticeship”.