GCSE results day: Hathershaw celebrate best-ever day

Hathershaw College Principal David McEntee has saluted the best-ever set of results from its students on an exciting GCSE Results day.

For the past four years, Oldham’s Hathershaw college has achieved its best ever results – and 2018 is no different! Their rate of pupils achieving grades 4-9 (C – A* under the previous system) including Maths and English is 64%.

They have also beaten the national average with their Progress 8 score, a number between -1 and +1 measuring the results of pupils in one school relative to what they would have achieved in another.

The national average is 0, but The Hathershaw College now boasts a score of 0.44, meaning that a pupil at the school achieved on average nearly half a grade higher than they would have elsewhere.

Mr McEntee told the Chronicle: "It's been a great morning for Hathershaw.

"This is always the best day of the year.

"We've had a number of high-fliers, as you would imagine on the day we celebrate our best-ever set of results.

"It would be wrong for me to single ou any individual because across the board, all the students have done really well.

"The vast majority of our students will now progress to study with our partner Oldham Sixth Form College."

Student Awais Khan, the Head Boy at the College, added: "I'm really happy with my results.

"It's been difficult as I come from a Franch background, but everyone at Hathershaw has really helped me.

"I'm now moving on to do my A-levels at Stockport Grammar."

Jack Maddison added: "I'm really pleased with my results.

"Thinking back to when I came to Hathershaw in Year Seven it seems such a long time ago.

"Today it finally feels great to see the results of all that hard work I've been putting in."

Meanwhile, the students of Crompton House School secured another excellent set of grades with the students’ attainment being well above the national average. 

Twenty-seven-per-cent of all results were at grades 7-9, 62% of all results were at grades 5-9 and 80% of results were at grades 4-9. 

More than 100 top grade 9s were awarded to Crompton House students this year.

Headteacher Karl Newell said: "I am very pleased to congratulate our Year 11 students for their excellent GCSE results.

"We were eagerly anticipating the results from the new specification courses and we are very pleased with how the Crompton House pupils have done in these and in their other courses. 

"I am particularly pleased that we have a good number of new grade nines and eights. 

"We are looking forward to seeing many of our students return to Crompton House Sixth Form in September and to hearing how others have been successful in gaining places on various college courses."

This year has seen the second set of changes to GCSE curriculum and assessment. 

In addition to the changes in 2017 for English and Maths when they were made more challenging, similar changes in 2018 will affect 20 more subjects, and the remainder from 2019.

These subjects are all graded on a new scale of 9 to 1, with 9 the highest grade, rather than A* to G.

Simple comparison of 2018 GCSE results with previous years’ results is not possible.  

These changes also affect the government Basics, Attainment 8, Progress 8 and Ebacc measures.  

Progress comparison will be possible later this year when national level data is released.

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