GCSE results: 16 celebratory photos from Sheffield pupils who came through Covid for their hard-earned grades

For the parents and teachers of today’s students graduating Y11, it may feel like time has flown. These pupils would have been at most 12 years old when Covid-19 moved all learning online. Now they are 16 and collecting their GCSE results.

The expectations on them this year were placid - that grades nationwide would be ‘restored to pre-pandemic levels.’ But truthfully they deserve all the praise in the world for getting where they are now.

They include the pupils of Sheffield’s Notre Dame High, who opened their envelopes on Thursday to the school’s best ever results, including several pupils earning a clean sweep of ‘all 9s’, and two thirds of all pupils picking up a 7 or above in either English or maths.

Director of school improvement John Coats said: “We are absolutely delighted to see so many happy students picking up their GCSE results in school today. They are the school's best ever set of GCSE results, and are a real testament to the hard work of students and staff, particularly given the disruption to their schooling that this year group experienced during the pandemic.”

Westfield School, too, reported some of the best ever for the school with two thirds of students passing both English and maths and 46 per cent achieving a 5 or above.

High Storrs School praised its pupils for “working tirelessly” against the stress of lockdown and online learning to come out with four-out-of-five students earning a Grade 5 in both English and maths, and with 45 per cent of all grades coming in at grade 7, 8, or 9.

And some star pupils across the city included Outwood Academy City’s Wane Nyirenda, who scored seven Grade 9s and one Grade 8; Sheffield Park Academy’s Muzamil Hayat, who achieved four grade 9s and three grade 8s; and Astrea Academy’s Huw Davies, who earned himself a Grade 8 in Chinese, something he opted in to do on his own.

In England, exams regulator Ofqual has said it expects this year's national results to be "broadly similar" to last summer, when grades were brought back in line with pre-pandemic levels.

The move comes after Covid-19 led to an increase in top GCSE and A-level grades in 2020 and 2021, with results based on teacher assessments instead of exams.

But last week, the proportion of A-level entries awarded top grades surpassed pre-pandemic highs.

Lee Elliot Major , professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, told the PA news agency: "GCSE grades in 2024 will be marked by familiar divides in results between under-resourced pupils and their more privileged peers, manifested in both national and regional inequalities.

"It is likely that competition for sixth-form places will be even more intense this year given the rising number of 16-year-olds taking GCSEs.

"The concern is that pupils face a lottery in the chances of securing places at sixth forms and colleges across the country."

Leaders in the education sector have warned that the cohort of young people receiving their GCSE results today have had to overcome a series of challenges in their secondary schooling following the pandemic.

Sarah Hannafin, head of policy at the NAHT school leaders' union, said: "The students who are getting their results have had a rough ride.

"Year 7 is always a big year for young people making that transition from primary to secondary and obviously their first couple of years in secondary school were really disrupted with lockdowns and remote learning and all the things that came with it.

"They went through Covid and we've then had the cost-of-living crisis and all of the problems that have come with that. They've had some real challenges in their secondary school career."

Meanwhile, more students have been applying to sit their exams in smaller rooms away from the main exam hall since Covid-19 due to anxiety, it has been suggested - with one school affected in Rotherham.

In Wales High School in Rotherham more students sat their GCSEs outside the main exam hall than in the exam hall for the first time this year.

Wales High’s former headteacher and general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Pepe Di'Lasio, said: "The levels of anxiety exhibited by students in the run-in to these exams - in what was the end of Year 11 for them - was heightened much more than we have ever seen before.

"This is post-pandemic. It's certainly growing, it's certainly a trend that I am seeing across lots of schools."