A great A-level day for Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle

Aug 14 2008 By Alex Hickey

A-level results day in Gwynedd

Aug 14 2008

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PUPILS and staff at Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle have been celebrating a healthy set of A and AS level results today.

The Penygroes based school’s head teacher, Emyr Hughes, said: "I am very pleased with the results. The overall performance for the upper six form has been good and there were some very good individual performances as well."

Mr Hughes, who has just completed his first year in charge of the school, believed today’s positive performance by its pupils would inspire others to follow in their footsteps next year.

"We have a relatively small year 13, with about 39 pupils this year taking A levels, but after today’s results

hope more will be encouraged to sit the (A-level) exams next year," he added.

One of the school’s star performers was Catrin Huws Jones who achieved A grades in Welsh, chemistry and biology and a B grade in French.

A delighted Catrin, 18, said: "I really didn’t expect to do this well. Chemistry was the one subject I struggled with at the beginning, but luckily, as the year went on it all just clicked."

Catrin plans to celebrate in Caernarfon with some friends from school tonight and enjoy the next few weeks off before preparing to go to university in September.

"I am going to Liverpool to study medicine and although I am looking forward to going I still hope to keep in touch with all my friends from school."

Another high achiever was Luned Badder, who collected two As and a B in Welsh, music and biology respectively.

She plans to go down to Cardiff to study bio-medicine but was just delighted to achieve the grades she needed to get on the course.

Luned said: "We all put quite a lot of effort in and it is quite high pressured but it all paid off in the end."

The success at Dyffryn Nantlle has been mirrored across the county with young people scoring higher than the national average in A level exams

The percentage achieving grades A-E across all subjects was 98.1 per cent, with 25 per cent achieving grade A - the national averages were 97.6 per cent and 24.1 per cent respectively.

The A-E percentage was 100 per cent in about three-quarters of the subjects offered across the schools.