Students at Wensleydale School are celebrating after receiving their GCSE results today.
The Leyburn school said this year’s results had sustained improvements in achievement made over recent years, despite the Year 11 cohort being relatively small and including a high proportion of pupils with additional needs.
The school said 20 per cent of the cohort had special educational needs, while 11 per cent had Education, Health and Care Plans.
Headteacher Julia Polley said: “I’m incredibly proud of our Year 11 students. Every result represents a huge amount of work and resilience, not just from the students themselves but from the staff and families who have supported them.
“After several years of improving results, sustaining those levels with this particular cohort is something we are really pleased about.
“It demonstrates that being genuinely inclusive and having high expectations for every student can, and should, go hand in hand.”
The school reported improvements in history, sociology and the sciences, with particularly strong results also achieved in French, art, hospitality and catering, and design and technology.
The GCSE results follow a positive Ofsted inspection earlier this year which highlighted inclusion as a key strength of the school.
Inspectors said inclusion “threads through all aspects” of the school and assessed it as meeting the Strong Standard.
Mrs Polley said students had different starting points, strengths and challenges and it was the school’s job to provide the support they needed while remaining ambitious about what they could achieve.
The headteacher said the school also aimed to prepare pupils for a range of routes after Year 11, including A-levels and university, apprenticeships, college and technical routes into employment.
She said Wensleydale’s links with local employers, work experience opportunities and careers programme helped pupils understand the options available to them.
“We’re delighted with what this group has achieved, but even more importantly, we want them to leave Wensleydale feeling confident and excited about what comes next,” she added.
