News

A* Success at A Level

Pupils  have been celebrating an impressive set of A Level results, with well over half of the papers achieving an A grade or above.   This is the first time that sixth formers have been able to attain an A* at A Level -  the new grade is reserved for an exclusive group of pupils scoring at least 90% in their A2 exam – and seven hard working Bancroftians achieved three or more A* grades, including Karandeep Nandra, Tim Robinson and Rupal Desai who all achieved a fantastic tally of  four A*s.

Once again the school saw a 100% pass rate, with 87% of exams gaining grades A*/A or B.  Sixty one pupils achieved at least three A grades and fifteen achieved at least four A grades.

The school sees nine of its most talented pupils off to Oxbridge colleges in September.  Six of these have confirmed places at Cambridge:  Izabel Cheung (Natural Sciences), Rachael Flaherty (Geography) Ifey Frederick (Classics), Alyssa Hickson  (Modern & Medieval Languages), Karandeep Nandra (Medicine) and Lara Tembey (Economics).  Aqil Taiyeb (Physics), Ruchika Patel (Geography) and Annabelle Trotter (Ancient and Modern History) have confirmed places at Oxford.

In addition, eight pupils are planning to study medicine (or related subjects such as dentistry).

Mary Ireland, congratulated the pupils on their successes, “The Sixth Formers have been very focused in their studies and their hard work, together with the support given by their teachers, has paid off in this set of results.  Fifty members of the year group gained at least one A*, with 21.3% of all A Levels taken scoring A*.  This is well above the national average for A* which is 8.1%.”

Global Student Forum

Last Tuesday six members of the L6 Religious Studies group attended this year’s “Global Student Forum” which was entitled ‘Education Beats Poverty’.  The forum is an annual high-profile event: one of the major sponsors is the Department for International Development, Steven O’Brien, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development, was a speaker and Queen Rania of Jordan sent a video message.  Some of the Bancroftians met the former child soldier and international Reggae singer/songwriter, actor and political campaigner Ben Okafor from Nigeria, who spoke at the conference.   The conference aimed to inspire and equip sixth formers from all over the country to educate their peers about why 72 million children are denied a primary education and what can be done about it.  The delegates now hope to pass their knowledge onto their peers through assemblies, workshops and PSHE lessons.  The Rev Moore said that it may even be possible for the students to go into local primary schools to share their knowledge.

Artists receive invitation from John Lewis

Miss Barry’s Thirds Art group has been working on a project based around the theme of tea-time and partly involving the design of patterns for the production of tea-towels.  She sent a selection of the designs to the John Lewis Home Design Studio for any comment or response they would be willing to make. The terrific result was the consideration of each design, a series of enthusiastic comments and a very generous offer for the group to visit the John Lewis Design Studio.  Carol Higgs, Manager of the Home Design Team of John Lewis, wrote, "Each pupil has shown amazing ability and great colour and design sense.  They have also proved that it can be fun to turn an everyday object such as a tea towel into a colouful piece of artwork.  Some of the artwork has also great potentuial to be turned into place mats or even into stunning ceramic teapots and cups and saucers."

Mathematical medalists!

A handful of our mathematicians have recently proved that they are amongst the top junior maths brains in the country!  Following their brilliant performances in the Junior Maths Challenge, five  Remove boys  qualified for this year’s Junior Maths Olympiad.   Around 1,200 of the highest scorers in the Junior Maths Challenge are invited by the UKMT to participate in the Junior Mathematical Olympiad which consists of in-depth mathematical problems of an unfamiliar nature, designed to be enjoyable but highly challenging.

The top 25%  participants receive a Certificate of Distinction and around 200 of them receive medals (gold, silver and bronze), the top 50 students are awarded a Book Prize.  The Bancroft's medallists were  Kavin Vijayakumar who gained a silver medal and was one of the Book Prize winners, Francis Clark-Murray and Alex Ruben, both of whom were awarded bronze medals.  Joseph Oxlade and Alex Moss also qualified for the Olympiad and received certificates of Participation.  Head of Junior Maths, Penny Thompson, said, “Getting five pupils through to the Olympiad is fantastic, but getting three medalists is exceptional! We’ve never had as many as three before.  I am really proud of these boys!  This is an outstanding achievement; the standard of Junior Maths here at Bancroft’s is incredibly strong at the moment.”