Kehinde Sowole and Deborah Sowole have achieved top grades to emerge among the best ever results from Ark Globe Academy in the United Kingdom General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations.
16-year-old identical twins Kehinde and Deborah Sowole achieved top grades, including a raft of eights in their exam, which is the equivalent of WAEC in Nigeria.
Head teacher Matt Jones of Ark Globe Academy in Elephant and Castle in London said:
“This is the best progress the pupils have made in the school’s history despite the increasing challenges and the rigour of the exams.”
Another outstanding student of the academy was 16-year-old Sara Sasvari, who was among the highest achievers with eight top grades, and now wants to become a theoretical physicist.
Her success is even more remarkable as she moved to London from Hungary in 2014 and could not speak English. She has also been diagnosed with Stargardt Disease which affects her sight.
According to Sara Sasvari:
“I’m really happy and proud of myself. It’s been a lot of hard work.”
The GCSE results, which were released across the UK, showed that girls are closing the gap on boys in mathematics and physics.
This year 15.2 percent of girls taking mathematics were awarded top grades of either 7, 8 or 9 – equivalent to A or A* in the old qualifications – up from 14.7 percent last year.
Meanwhile, the proportion of boys scoring top grades fell from 16.8 percent last year to 16.6, meaning that the gap between boys and girls has now narrowed from 2.1 to 1.4 percentage points.
Girls are catching up with boys in physics, where the gap has narrowed from 5.7 to 3.9 percentage points.
Boys are still winning a higher proportion of top grades (45.7 percent) but girls increased their share of 7s, 8, and 9s from 39.6 percent last year to 41.8 percent this year.
Girls already outperform boys at chemistry and biology GCSEs as well as Computing despite the fact that more than three times as many boys take the subject than girls.
