Students at New College Pontefract are celebrating after successfully securing offers in one of the top universities in the country.
All eleven students who had interviews received an offer. This is the largest number of students at New College to be offered a place at Oxford or Cambridge, the county’s two highest ranking universities.
A Level pupils Darcy Noble, Abigail Tankard, Cameron Briggs, Alison Nicoll, Tom Clark, Jarrod Ashton, Tom Bennett, Gideon Mills, Martha Glover, Sherilyn Cripps and Beth Cotter all did incredibly well.
Listen to three of the students, Tom Bennett, Martha Glover and Tom Clark speak of the moment they opened their offer letter and the support they received from New College.
Notably, four of the students are family firsts, being the first of their family to have gained an offer at the Universities.
Pauline Hagen, Executive Principal said: “We are very proud of the tremendous success of our students in securing 11 offers from Oxford and Cambridge, two of the most competitive universities in the country. Their success reflects the sustained hard work of the students and staff who work on our Oxbridge applications, and illustrates that state school students can access top flight universities when given the right support. Through the college’s Excellence Academy we work with our Gifted and Able students to provide that kind of targeted support, which is a key part of the story behind their success today.”
The teenagers took part in the sixth form college’s Excellence Academy, a Gifted and Able programme that helped prepare them for interview. This included an additional weekly support session and one to one meetings with the Oxbridge careers tutors.
Stuart Nash, Assistant Principal and Teaching and Learning Excellence Academy Manager, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for our Oxbridge applicants and for the New College Excellence Academy itself, which continues to raise the aspirations of our students and support them with the skills they need to progress to an elite university.”
Three of our students, Tom Bennett, Martha Glover and Tom Clark told us of the moment they opened their offer letter and the support they received from New College.
Listen to the full version here:
