Exam Success

Celebrations at Cullompton Community College 2020

I am delighted to be able to share CCC exam results with you along with deeply felt Congratulations to  the Cullompton Community College class of 2020. These excellent results are a testament to each student’s hard work and perseverance over many years. Well done!

As you know, GCSE results in 2020 had to be awarded differently from usual, after exams were unable to go ahead due to Covid-19. Schools and colleges were asked to use their professional experience to make a fair and objective judgement of the grades they believed students would have achieved had they sat their exams this year, and to submit these centre-assessed grades (CAGs) to the relevant exam board.

Our teachers and leaders in each subject worked together to discuss and agree the centre-assessed grade for each student. They took into account a wide range of available evidence, including class work, mock exams and other records of student performance over time.

The intention was that the exam boards would then moderate the CAGs, to check that schools and colleges had approached this task consistently, before providing students with their final calculated grades. Unfortunately, as you will no doubt be aware, the method they used to do this proved problematic, and was likely to lead to many grades being unfairly downgraded.

The government therefore made the decision that GCSE students would be awarded whichever was higher for each subject – their centre assessed grade or their calculated grade. This is what the grades students received on results day are based on and they confirm a multitude of exceptional subject achievements and glowing individual successes which I would like to share with you. 

We celebrate particularly strong performances in Art, Mathematics and Statistics, all the Sciences and in History. In Mathematics students have achieved striking results with 17% of grades at 9-7, 79% at 4+ and 55% at 5 and above. English performance remains very strong with 75% of grades at 4+, 57% at 5+ with 18% of students scoring the top 9-7 grades. English and Maths combined grades are 68% at 4+ and 45% at 5+.

Of the 81 students entered for the Ebacc group of subjects, 31% achieved a good pass and 22% a strong pass across the broad and balanced range of subjects of English, Maths, Science Humanities and Languages.

Science performed well again with 100% of students achieving passes in the triples of Physics, Chemistry and Biology and 69% of students achieving 2 GCSES in the Combined Sciences. 

Year 10 students are also to be congratulated for their magnificent results in GCSE English Literature and some individual and very successful outcomes from early entries in Maths and Statistics, for example Callum Abbott with a stunning run of 3 grade 9 results in English Literature, Maths and Statistics.

Results confirm that students and staff have worked together exceptionally well over two or three years of GCSEs to navigate the exacting demands of the tough new specification courses. Well done everyone, I could not be more proud of you all, both staff and students at this time of national challenge coupled with the unprecedented adversity of a pandemic.

Some individual successes:

Maeve Garnsworthy, Jaspinder Kaur, Roksana Godon and Rachel Wilson have achieved outstanding sets of results which show exceptional progress, Well Done!

Well done CCC and my very best wishes to you all for a bright future - reach for the stars and make a difference in life. 

Julie Phelan, Headteacher.