THE principal of a school whose GCSE league table place jumped 36 places – up to number 11 in the North – has said ‘we are proud of our students every year’.
Neil Morton, principal of Portora Royal in Enniskillen, saw his school climb to 11th from 47th in the most recent GCSE table, yet described the leap in the table as being of ‘no real significance’.
While he admitted he was pleased with the results at GCSE last year, he said: “The school is ranked as the top boys’ school and misses out on a top ten placing overall by the meaningless statistic of 0.5% of a pupil.A difference of 30% might be down to a handful of grades.”
Mr Morton said that the most significant improvement for a boys’ school lies in ‘the improvement in literacy that is registered from year to year’.
He said: “These fine examination results have happened in the context of change. Our new pupils in Year 8 every year for the past twelve years have manifested a broader academic ability range than before. A greater proportion of them avail of free school meals and there are many more with special education needs than before. Yet our results have been improving.
“This improvement is a consequence of the structures and procedures we have put in place to keep parents more alert to their children’s progress against their targets and the strategies we have adopted to support students in danger of under-achieving.”
The highest performing school in Fermanagh, at 10, was Collegiate Grammar School, which moved up from 49th place.
Principal Elizabeth Armstrong said that she was ‘pleased to note our position both as one of the top five girls’ grammar schools and as one of the top five non-denominational grammar schools in Northern Ireland’.
She said that this echoed her school’s performance over the past number of years when they have been in the top ten schools in Northern Ireland on the basis of GCSE and Advanced Level results on five occasions from 2006-12 making them the ‘most consistently achieving controlled grammar school in Northern Ireland’.
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