Here at Duke’s, we are over-the-moon with our GCSE results, which continue to rise, year up year. We are privileged and inspired to share four of our students’ stories.
Khadija has been characterised, throughout her time with us, as relentlessly determined, driven and brimming with intellectual curiosity. She recently featured on Radio 4’s Poetry Please. She leaves us as the highest achieving student in the year group – a hugely well-deserved accolade. All of her grades were 8 or 9 or equivalent – the very top possible grades. Well done, Khadija. Khadija is destined to make this world a better place and we look forward to hearing about her future successes.
Omar’s lunchtime conversations were characterised by everything from philosophy and politics to the inner-workings of a guinea pig (often changing at lightning rate in between the them)., Omar has a sparky intellect and has shown amazing grit and resilience to secure a set of superb results despite a significant amount of time away from school due to serious illness. His results include top grades in Maths, Chemistry and Physics. Omar is now making his way to the prestigious Rugby School, where he should thrive.
Sarantis has been one of our unsung heroes. Greek is his first language, and he came to us with primary school exam results which suggested he would need plenty of support. With perfect conduct and quiet self-restraint, Sarantis has grafted his way to making outstanding progress, averaging four grades above his minimum target across his subjects. Sarantis’s combination of humility and determination ensure he has a bright future ahead of him.
Maksymillian arrived in England from Poland in 2014, speaking no English. Within months in the school, his rapid progress brought him to the attention of school leaders. To the admiration of his teachers and peers alike, Maks became known for making unique and thought provoking points in class and his passion for developing an impressively wide vocabulary (and teaching his teachers new words!). One day, Maks came in to show us the beginning of his second novel. Maks is an aspiring writer, and with the top grade in English Literature, we look forward to seeing him published in the very near future.
“They were all outstanding teams. They showed different strengths and varied approaches to the tasks and all of these were very well reasoned with an effort to ensure the entire team agreed. It was a pleasure to welcome each of these students to First State and I would not be surprised to see some of them applying to work here in the future!” a member of the First State Investments team said afterwards.