The headteacher of Stowmarket High School has paid tribute to his students in the wake of GCSE results day.

The school performed "pretty much on the average" in terms of grades - and Dave Lee-Allan praised the "great young people who've faced adversity" as Covid disrupted their studies.

Mr Lee-Allan said: “We know the results now and we’re really happy with them.

%image(14629294, type="article-full", alt="GCSE results day at Stowmarket High School. (Left-Right) Eleanor Watts, Angel Calabio, Simone Scott, Keira Scott, Ellie Mai Wintrup, Milly Lemar.")

“This is the first year that students had sat their exams (since pre-Covid) – there was great uncertainty around where grade boundaries were going to fall, which just increased anxiety for both staff and students.

“One of the positives of Covid was that schools went through a process where we didn’t report the results which I thought was incredibly healthy because of that basic thing of seeing one school's set of results against another – cohorts are different – schools are different – communities are different.

“Those black and white figures hid all sorts of detail – so we’re not tending to push out facts and figures, but they’re available if people want to see them.

%image(14629301, type="article-full", alt="GCSE results day at Stowmarket High School.")

“Ultimately, this is just a fraction of what they’re going to offer society – their exam grades are just tickets to get into the next door, it’s them as people that we’re more interested in."

Mr Lee-Allan also praised his students for coming through an "enormous amount of disruption" throughout the pandemic - as well as the "extraordinary resilience" shown by the education sector and the students and their families.

%image(14629303, type="article-full", alt="Ice creams to celebrate at GCSE results day at Stowmarket High School. L-R Riley Baker, Courtney Hammond, Daniel Brinkley and Shannon Bell.")

“These are great young people who've faced adversity, they’ve worked really hard and so they can feel confident going forward."

%image(14629322, type="article-full", alt="Jumping for joy at the GCSE results day at Stowmarket High School. Eleanor Watts, Angel Calabio, Simone Scott, Keira Scott, Ellie Mai Wintrup, Milly Lemar.")

Sonny Larke - who achieved seven's across the board in his results - said: “I’m over the moon with my results.

“I worked my absolute hardest - that’s what I told myself to do as I was waiting for my results because I knew I did the best that I can."

%image(14629342, type="article-full", alt="Sonny Larke gained 7's and above.")

Fellow student Shona Mills said she was "very happy" with her results which will see her move on to college. Shona, who put "a lot of hard work" into her studies also touched on the effect that Covid had on her year.

"I thought it was harder - and I feel like our year had it the worse than other years. But I put the work in and still got the results I needed."

%image(14629343, type="article-full", alt="Shona Mills was "very happy" with her results.")