732 pupils get clean sweep of 9s in their GCSEs

[HPFA]

Remember that thread about only a tiny handful of pupils getting all 9s?

According to one local newspaper (unfortunately they don't give a reference):
There were only 732 pupils across England who scored a clean sweep of top 9 grades in all their GCSE

www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/16594185.gsce-results-day-2018-get-the-latest-live-updates-from-schools-across-bucks/

Brighton College say five of their pupils gained 10 Grade 9s so the overall figure sounds roughly correct.

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/23/gcses-boys-close-gap-on-girls-after-exams-overhaul

Tougher exam my ass - 80% at my son's school scored 9 on the new Maths GCSE.

The exams were tougher but because the C+ rate and A+ rate had to stay the same, the grade boundaries were lowered.

Crazy. It makes the grades so meaningless when they hand them out like smarties

I teach one of them

Bet their mums are all on Mumsnet...........

Comprehensive Dominatrix?

Anyone know, or know where to find out, how many pupils got a clean sweep of As in the last few years of O levels?

732 is probably higher than I was expecting as only 2000 got 3 9s last year in English x 2 and maths, and you wouldn’t have thought that over a third of those would get 9s in every single other subject as well.

I guess that means that if you’re really good at maths, and really good at the skills needed for both lit and lang, everything else falls into place more easily. I wonder how many of those straight 9s would include an exam that needs a completely different type of skill like PE.

Dom.

Sorry!

It makes the grades so meaningless when they hand them out like Smarties

Not meaningless to the people who achieve them though, is it? And all GCSEs become meaningless in a way after you've got A-Levels.

“Tougher exam my ass - 80% at my son's school scored 9 on the new Maths GCSE.”

80% of the whole year?

Mom

Bloody hell!!!

So over half a million students took GCSEs and just over 700 got straight 9s. So about one in a thousand. Not quite sure how that counts as "giving them out like smarties". I can't tell you how cross that sort of statement makes me!

AnguaResurgam I remember three girls out of 60 from my old grammar school got 8 As (1982). Quite a few only got two or three passes. Very different days.

That's what, about 0.1%? Not really like smarties...

“ I can't tell you how cross that sort of statement makes me!”

Yep, me too. Both on behalf of the one in a thousand and the other 999. But Mumsnet famously only cares about the high achievers.

I got all As in 1987. First (and last, as laat year of O levels) was in the local paper! However, I went to a non selective school in a town of grammar schools, where quite a few got all As.

Lost part of that. First and last in my school. But not unusual across all the schools in the (selective) town.

If i told you how deligted I was with some of students who got all 1s, MN would think I was daft. But the work that has gone into those...

“According to figures released by Ofqual, of the 732 pupils who got a clean sweep of 9s in reformed subjects, 454 (62 per cent) were girls and 278 (38 per cent) were boys.

Across the core subjects of English language, English literature and maths, 2000 students got three 9s this year, compared to 2050 in 2017.

According to today's results, 4.3 per cent of all entries for 9-1 qualifications achieved a grade 9.

Five per cent of female entries achieved the top grade, and 3.6 per cent of male entries.”

Says TES

Comments like the giving them out like smarties are really harsh.
My DD has come out with a 5. She’s top set maths and has a really rough couple of years- yr 10 she was put up to top and the teacher refused to go over anything they had looked at the year before. Then started private tuition in September and her tutor realised she’s dyslexic. She needed a 6 to get into college to do the A levels she wanted to get into medicine.
Shame she wasn’t in the smarties queue isn’t it. Maybe because her school went into special measures in yr 9

I hope she's not too gutted Gibble, but I genuinely just felt a physical twinge of frustration and sadness for her. There's so many routes into medicine though, and I'm sure she'll be absolutely amazing at it 💕

Bet their mums are all on Mumsnet

It's the kids who will have had to sweat blood for the 4s they needed for college courses I'm thinking of today.

Eveningshadows like smarties? Are you kidding me?

My adult English GCSE class achieved mostly 4s and 5s, with a couple of 6s and one 8. I can't tell you the blood, sweat and tears those people went through to get those grades. It is a tough GCSE. Don't you dare belittle that achievement.

I also feel for the percentage of those 700 kids who, like me, will have achieved highly at GCSE and in the process become perfectionist, competitive, and highly self critical, and therefore will find it much more difficult to thrive at A Level and especially at uni, where the ability to keep going and "roll with the punches" is much more important than how much you know about the makeup of a plant cell.