Blatchington Mill School & Sixth Form are celebrating GCSE results which have seen 67% of students being awarded 5A*-C grades.

The school said:

• Blatchington Mill is proud of excellent GCSE results, with 67% of students being awarded 5A*-C grades including English and Maths.

• High quality teaching ensured that students made fantastic progress with the new national progress measure called “Progress 8” and ‘valued added’ measures showing students made better progress at Blatch than others did nationally.

• Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and those with SEND, made better progress than in previous years, showing Blatch promoting social mobility and high aspirations for all.

• 75% of students achieved at least 5 grades higher than a C and 28% of entries were awarded A* or A grades

Headteacher Ashley Harrold said in a statement: "These are results in which the school community can take great pride.

"Students have once again demonstrated their excellence and endeavour and now have a brilliant set of grades to use to begin the next stage of their education.

"Nationally, and as a school, there has been a shift towards focusing on the progress that students make since they joined the school, rather than simply which grades they get.

"We believe that this is good because it is a fairer measure of how effective we have been as a school and gives every student an equal playing field to achieve.

"When we consider the results in these terms they are likely to be our best-ever for progress and value-added, and are far above the national figures for last year.

"This is important as the overall rate of 5 A*-C grades including English and Maths for us is 4% lower, and it would be possible to think results had dropped – but for our students this year they have actually made better progress to get to their final grades, and this reflects our school ethos.

"Hard work, effort, effective teaching and support from home mean everyone can achieve, and it isn’t too late at age 11 when you join secondary school to catch up.

"We have a number of students who performed on average 2 grades better than expected, and I am so proud of them.

"Equally, there were those who have performed exceptionally to achieve the very top grades - nearly 800 A*/A grades and over 1500 A*-B grades.

"We’re perfectionists, and we’ll spend the next term using these results to plan how we can improve the school even further, but for staff, students and parents they can enjoy the rest of the summer and reflect on a job well done.”