Pupils have shown incredible resilience and character in managing the pressure over the past six months.

“As with last week’s A-Levels, we believe that GCSE results day this year is not a day for Bootham School -or indeed, schools in general- to be celebrating statistics (however good those may look) but to be celebrating with great gusto the young people who gained them!

Our young people who have received their grades today have so much to be proud of. They have shown incredible resilience and character in managing pressures over the past six months that had threatened to derail their progress. Instead, they have stuck at it and kept engaged with learning, with school and with each other despite the cancellation of their exams. The positive way they embarked on the A-Level preparation courses we offered them over the second half of the last term, for example, speaks volumes for their commitment and maturity.

Theirs is absolutely not a year group whose achievements have somehow been devalued by the deeply unsatisfactory process that has led to the grades they have gained, as some are suggesting. It is a year group whose achievements are enhanced by what they have had to manage and how positively they have emerged from the challenges of it. They truly deserve their success.

Hopefully, the road ahead to even more important qualifications and experiences will be smoother for them than it has been to this point so far. They certainly deserve it to be.”

Chris Jeffery, Headmaster