Congratulations to all of our students, it was lovely to welcome back many of our students this morning to DHSB whilst maintaining all of the safety measures needed due to Covid-19.
Our staff wanted to be there today to celebrate and support them face to face with their next steps.
Ethan Carlisle celebrating his results accompanied by his Brother Alfie, DHSB Alumni
This has been an extremely challenging year for all of us, particularly our Year 11 students who have worked extremely hard for many years with such great determination, dedication and commitment to their studies culminating in a unusual and unique results day.
Although it is a unique results day, it does not take away the achievements of our wonderful students, they have worked incredibly hard to achieve these results and they deserve the recognition and rewards to progress to their next steps, they have also had to show great resilience and courage during the unusual end to Year 11 and facing the uncertainty and turmoil of a unstable build up to receiving their results.
I would like to convey my sincerest thanks to all of the staff who have worked tirelessly over the years to support our students, with particular note to the meticulous and robust nature of the way they have had to determine the centre assessed grades as a replacement for the normal examinations.
It is also important that we all understand and recognise the difference between centre assessed grades and normal examinations:
Schools were asked to make their best assessment of what grade the student would be most likely to receive and to place candidates in rank order. The purpose of this ranking was to allow adjustments to take place to ensure the distribution of grades at a national level was similar to previous years.
The intention was that the exam boards would then moderate the CAGs, to check that schools and colleges had approached this task consistently, before providing students with their final calculated grades. Unfortunately, as you will no doubt be aware, the method they used to do this proved problematic, and was likely to lead to many grades being unfairly downgraded.
The government therefore made the decision that GCSE and A level students would be awarded whichever was higher for each subject – their CAG or their calculated grade. This is what the grades you’re receiving today are based on.
This is a process that has never been attempted before and was forced by circumstances which nobody could possibly have foreseen. The staff at DHSB have worked diligently to provide grades for students and to place them in rank order as fairly and accurately as possible and to best support our students.
Our teachers know our students well and we were able to assess grades with a high degree of accuracy.
I would also like to convey my sincerest thanks to our parents and carers who have provided tremendous support to their child over the years and in particular have had to guide them through a extremely challenging time during the last few months, together with the fantastic efforts of our young people they are celebrating an excellent set of results and most importantly are progressing to their next exciting adventures.
Staff are spending the rest of the day with our students to finalise their next steps by enrolling them into our Sixth Form, finalising apprenticeships or other courses in further education. We wish all our Year 11 students every success with their next steps and we look forward to welcoming many of them back in September.
Good luck!
For more details on how grades were finalised you can view and read this guidance.