Four Handsworth pupils land 63 GCSEs between them

Four Birmingham school pupils proved to be a class act today after achieving a remarkable 63 GCSEs between them.

As thousands of pupils across the West Midlands were nervously today opening their results, the pupils from Holyhead School in Handsworth were celebrating their bumper crop.

The pupils, all 16 years old, were Parvinder Dalay, who scooped 17 passes including seven at A* or A, Kiranjit Gill with 17 passes, Harpreet Bhachu with 17 passes and Ismail Ali with 12 passes, in what is expected to be another successful year for schools across Birmingham and the Black Country.

Harpreet, from Tividale, whose 17 passes included three at A* or A, said: “It was quite stressful making sure I had to time to work on each subject but I managed it.

“I want to go to sixth form now and eventually have a career that mixes business with art and design.”

Holyhead’s record set of GCSE results comes after suffering disappointment when plans for its new building were scrapped last month.

Work was set to start work next January on a new £20 million complex next January under the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme.

But it fell foul of Education Secretary Michael Gove’s announcement to abandon BSF.

Despite the blow, Holyhead has now recorded its best ever GCSE results, with at least 59 per cent of pupils achieving five or more top grade A*-C passes including English and Maths.

This is a significant improvement of 11 percentage points on last year’s then record achievement of 48 per cent. Delighted head teacher Martin Bayliss said: “This has come as a real boost when one or two of us were feeling down about being thrown out of Building Schools for the Future.

“We would all like a new school, but this just shows that buildings don’t make a school. We have worked in challenging physical circumstances for some time now.

“Half of our kids are on the special needs register and more than half are entitled to free school meals, so this is a tremendous achievement.”

Meanwhile students in Sandwell also pushed their way into the record books after notching up the borough’s best crop of GCSE results.

Perryfields High School Maths and Computing College in Oldbury saw 64 per cent of the students gain five or more passes at A*-C including Maths and English, and Wood Green High School College of Sport, Maths and Computing also performed well 59.4 per cent of students gaining five or more passes at A*-C including Maths and English.