Students at Benenden School are celebrating an increase in the number of top grades at A Level.
Benenden’s Headmistress Rachel Bailey praised students’ “outstanding” and “thoroughly deserved” achievements after 33 per cent of all results were awarded the top grade of A* – up from 28 per cent last year.
Overall, in today’s results an incredible 70 per cent of all Benenden’s grades were at A* or A and 88 per cent were at A*-B.
Ms Bailey said: “These are an outstanding set of results and I would like to congratulate our Six Two students on their tremendous success, which is thoroughly deserved.
“The girls have worked extremely hard and have been wonderfully supported by our high calibre teachers and pastoral teams, so it is gratifying to see all this work pay off today.”
Benenden’s students are now heading to leading universities around the world to study a wide range of courses.
Importantly for a school which is renowned for shaping future generations of successful, visionary women – and which is routinely listed as one of the world’s leading girls’ boarding schools in the prestigious Spear’s Schools Index – Benenden continues to break the mould for girls pursuing courses that defy the gender norms. Among this year’s cohort:
- An impressive 7 per cent of the year group are now heading to study Medicine or Veterinary courses
- 5 per cent will be studying Engineering
- 11 per cent are pursuing Economics-related courses.
Ms Bailey added: “At Benenden we offer girls A Complete Education which means they are truly prepared for the workplace and life. An important part of this philosophy includes ensuring that we push them out of their comfort zone and we routinely remind the girls to strive to be brave, not perfect.
“We want the girls at Benenden to defy those gender stereotypes and take risks by trying new things and not limiting their ambition. The success of this approach is demonstrated by the impressive onward destinations and the achievements we see day in, day out from our students.”
Notable achievements by Benenden students this year include:
- Reaching national finals in four highly-competitive Debating competitions, those run by the English-Speaking Union, Cambridge, Oxford and Durham.
- Leading the way in esports, as national champions in the Girls’ Schools Association esports league.
- One of our Six Twos, Olivia, won a bronze medal while representing the UK in the Philippines this summer in the International Biology Olympiad after being named one of the country’s top four biologists.
- Sisters Melanie and Nicole have just spent a week in Bologna after being selected as finalists in the European Nuclear Competition for Secondary Schools.
- Our poet laureate, Toni, won the hotly-contested Girls’ Schools Association creative writing competition.
- Benenden has recently won the “Awesome Sixth Form” award from Muddy Stilettos.
Today’s results also reinforce Benenden’s reputation for improving its students academically.
The School’s Value-Added – the measure of how much a school has improved its students’ grades – is also outstanding and among the top 6 per cent of schools in the UK today. Its Value-Added score of 0.4 means that, on average, students at Benenden have achieved almost half a grade higher in each subject than they were expected to at the beginning of Sixth Form.
Ms Bailey said: “At Benenden we are proud to educate a range of students and our Value-Added score reflects the strength of the academic and pastoral teams we are so fortunate to have here, because collectively they are working day and night to ensure each individual girl achieves her very best.”
Benenden students are now heading off to study at leading global institutions, with UK destinations including Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Durham, St Andrews, LSE and Edinburgh.
This year overseas destinations include Cornell, USC, Carnegie Mellon, Barnard College Columbia, Northwestern and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Students are studying courses as diverse as Medicine, Economics, Neuroscience, Business and Management, Environmental Geoscience, Anthropology, Maths, Film and Liberal Arts, Zoology and Game Design.
Today’s outstanding results are a testament to Benenden’s philosophy of A Complete Education, which includes an innovative curriculum that ensures its students are future ready.
In addition to its A Level offer, Benenden strongly encourages Sixth Form students to complete the Extended Project Qualification (a mini dissertation project). Meanwhile, all Sixth Form students complete the Professional Skills Programme, a two-year course teaching the skills needed to thrive in the workplace and beyond, including modules such as financial literacy, psychometric testing and the renowned Enterprise Challenge in which teams launch their own businesses.
The curriculum also features the Electives Programme, offering short courses in professional areas such as sign language, meteorology and metacognition, and Inclusive Leadership which focuses on the behaviours and creative problem-solving required by modern workplaces.
Join us for our Sixth Form Open Event on Thursday 11 September. Book here.