A level results at King James’s School in Knaresborough

Form left to right: King James's School students Alex Gray, Molly McGrath, James Hare, Luke Gray, Stephanie Newell and Caitlin Mawhinney stand with their results after a successful day

Many had arrived as early as 8.30am to collect their results before scattering off to celebrate their success.

The groups huddled excitedly talking with friends about their plans to party after months of stress and worrying and - if they were going to university - whereabouts they will be in a few weeks time.

King James’s School (KJS) student, Molly McGrath said: “It’s gone very well but I was so stressed I couldn’t eat breakfast. I think I was more stressed about results day than I was about exams, I did Maths, Biology and Chemistry and I’ve been accepted to do Biomedical studies. We’re not going out tonight but we’re going to get together and celebrate I’m sure.”

Molly was one of nearly ten students recognised by the school for her exceptional performance, receiving A* to A grade in her results right across the board.

Whilst some students planned to spend the rest of the day relaxing with their parents, or celebrating in style with friends, others were going off to do a day’s work and earn some more summer spending money.

Amongst the anxious parents, chattering friends and the occasional teary teenager, were plenty of staff members running around helping out and bidding farewell to another year group.

Headteacher at KJS, Carl Sugden said: “How stressful the day is depends on how the results go. This year has been a really good day because we’ve had 50 per cent of our students receive grades from A* to C. Obviously we know the results before the students do but we don’t know if they got into the university of their choice. We start the day with a list of students that we feel we need to check on to see how they did but thankfully today most of them got into university.”

For some students this year’s result was the second attempt at securing grades that would get them where they wanted to be, including re-sitter, Dolly Kemp.

Dolly said: “My first year of Sixth Form didn’t go as planned because obviously there’s a big jump between GSCE and A level which kind of baffled me a little bit so I stayed on did an extra year and got better AS results and this was my actual year of A2. It went really well I got into where I wanted to go - to Sheffield Hallam to do History, I need my C and I got my C to get in so I’m over the moon.”