Colchester's high flying pupils score outstanding grades in GCSEs

Colchester County High School for Girls’ Hannah Tsang, Aimee Batchelor, and Matilda Churchward all achieved straight 9s in their assessments on Thursday.

Colchester Royal Grammar School’s Abyan Saami also achieved straight 9s in his exams ahead of beginning his A level studies next month.

Committed – Abyan Saami did tutoring alongside his studies this year (Image: Daniel Rees, Newsquest)

Across the UK the number of GCSEs sat by pupils was up, but the number of pupils receiving grades from 7 to 9 was down, by about 200,000.

Proportionally, the number of top GCSE grades achieved by students hsa fallen to 22 per cent – down 4.3 per cent from last year as schools look to redress grade inflation.

But plenty of pupils in Colchester still managed to achieve highly.

Colchester County High School’s Hannah Tsang, 16, said she is looking to pursue Latin ahead of her A Level studies.

She said: “In our class, we are all really good friends and our teachers are really cool as well.

“Unlike English literature, in Latin, you can talk about anything you want and the argument will be valid – you can put in some really whacky analysis.”

Schoolmate Matilda Churchward, meanwhile, enjoyed running a school crocheting club over the past year.

Extra-curricular – Matilda Churchward has been running a crocheting club at Colchester County High School for Girls (Image: Daniel Rees, Newsquest)

As well has being a keen crocheter, Matilda is looking to pursue computer science.

She said: "I took computer science because I thought it's quite up and coming in having technology future-proofed.

“German I just really enjoy, and we have friends and family roots in Germany.

“I've also done Duke of Edinburgh and run the crocheting club.

“I learned to crochet when I was about ten at my primary school, so I thought I would bring it here.

“It was mostly for younger students, but there were some people in the sixth form who did it as well; I mostly make clothes, blankets, and scarves.”

Aimee Batchelor said the exams were less daunting than she anticipated.

Keen – Aimee Batchelor, who wants to study English literature at university, has also been writing for the Kilt, which is Colchester County High School for Girls' newspaper (Image: Daniel Rees, Newsquest)

She said: “We were all prepared and knew what to expect – it was less scary than it would have been.

“I also wrote for the Kilt, the school newspaper, and I want to do English literature at uni.”