Okehampton College leaders spoke of their pride for students as A-level and BTEC results were released yesterday.

Associate principal Craig Griffiths said: ‘We are incredibly proud of and excited for our students. Around 85% of students who applied to university have been offered their first choice places. Eight students achieved three A* grades and one in five students achieved three A*-A grades. Many results also illustrate the truly remarkable progress several of our students have made over their time with us.’

Their A-level studies have been marked by disruption due to the pandemic and periods of home learning, culminating in results based on ‘teacher assessed grades’ moderated by the exam boards. Mr Griffiths stressed that the students were carefully assessed.

‘The process we followed to arrive at their teacher assessed grades this year was thorough and rigorous, and teachers worked incredibly hard — in extraordinarily challenging circumstances, with the support of our Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust family, against a background of uncertainty and other coronavirus-related pressures — to ensure that the grades students have achieved were based on our fair, reasonable and carefully considered judgement of their performance across a range of evidence, on the curriculum content that they have been taught’.

Among students celebrating their results was Jacob Hole from Hatherleigh who got an A* in English, an A in Media Studies and a B in Engish. He is going to the UWE (University of the West of England) in Bristol to study Media Production.

Of the last couple of years, he said: ‘It has been quite weird, not really knowing what is going on. It has been just about going along and trying to do your best and hoping it is good enough. We had some really effective online learning in Year 13.’

He said it was good to see people on results day. ‘Everyone seems really happy,’ he added.