County’s GCSE results outstip national rises (Status: Press release)

SCHOOLS in Oxfordshire have outstripped increases in national GCSE results, to the delight of education chiefs.
The provisional 2008 GCSE statistics for England, released today by the Government, show a 2.3 per cent increase for Oxfordshire in the number of pupils getting five good GCSEs including Maths and English.
This compares with a 0.9 per cent national rise.

A total of 50.4 per cent of pupils in Oxfordshire gained 5 or more A*-C grades including English and Mathematics compared with 47.2 per cent in all schools nationally.

A total of 62.7 per cent of pupils in Oxfordshire achieved 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent. This is an increase of 5.3 per cent from 2007, compared with a national increase of 3.2 per cent.

A delighted Michael Waine, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement, said: “I know a huge amount of very hard work
has gone in to delivering this improvement both on the part of schools and the county council’s education team. I would like to congratulate
students and staff for all their efforts. Their success is well deserved.
“We are absolutely committed to offering the highest standards of education for young people throughout the county. Given the relatively affluent population make-up and academic heritage of our county, our schools should be achieving well above the national
average. These results show that we have made a great stride towards achieving this. However we mustn’t stop here and we know that we still have a long way to go on our journey of improvement. There’s a lot more hard work to do.”