Tameside College and Clarendon Sixth Form Principal Jackie Moores has praised her students as they received their A-Level and Level 3 qualification results this morning (Tuesday).

She said she was immensely proud of her students who had worked tirelessly, much of the time at home on their own, for almost two years.

Grades were judged by teachers instead of via examination due to the pandemic, with extra challenges due to solo learning.

Jackie said: “There’s been lots of challenges, rotating through face-to-face learning, learning online and partial timetables, before going back to face-to-face.

“This has been going on for two academic years for these students and staff. But there have been wider challenges for young people so all of the fun things that happen at college haven’t really happened for two years; educational trips, visits, team sports, socialising, all the sorts of things that you remember from your days at college.”

She also said that she had noticed the effect that lockdown has had on students.

“I have to say, we work with some of the most talented and brightest young people from Tameside and right across Greater Manchester and we’re lucky that we work with schools that get great results at GCSE, but some young people have really struggled with the lockdown and lack of socialising.

“It’s been really tough for people, so we’ve had a much bigger pastoral team who have been speaking to those young people on a much more regular basis when they’ve not been in college.”

In these modern times, students receive their results at home via the internet, rather than in person at the college. Principal Moores says that she misses seeing the happy faces of the students on results day.

“I do miss it, but we’re on the phone to them. We’ve got a team of staff in today to discuss the students' options for higher education and looking at clearing, but it’s not the same as face to face. I think the pandemic has taught us a lot of things are more easily done and just as effectively done online.”

She praised the work of her students, saying: “They’re brilliant. We measure our cohort year on year and we’re lucky that the Tameside schools that we work with have got significantly improved GCSE results over the last few years, before the pandemic. And they’re better than the north-west average in Tameside schools.”

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