Headteacher's pride as Priory School Southsea students pull off 'tremendous' GCSE results

Priory School Southsea headteacher Stewart Vaughan was pleased to see smiling faces around the school’s sports hall as students celebrated with friends, staff, parents and governors.

Mr Vaughan, who started his headship a week after this year’s leavers began their time at Priory, said: ‘It’s a good day because, after everything that’s gone on, the bottom line today is about the children and they can move forward with their lives after a sense of limbo.

‘We have seen brilliant kids get tremendous results, but we have still got the full range of experiences and our job is to be here for all of them.

‘This has categorically shown the importance of teacher and school. This has been one of our best year groups and to have them back and smiling and happy is a lovely thing.’

Theo Vaughan might have felt some more pressure than most as he picked up his GCSE results - as headteacher Stewart Vaughan also happens to be his dad.

Luckily, they could both feel very proud as Theo came away with three 6s, two 5s and two 4s.

The 16-year-old said: ‘I’m just over the moon right now, it’s better than what I expected. I felt very stressed, I was really worried for drama in particular because we were supposed to do a performance which didn’t happen before lockdown.’

Theo will be heading to Chichester College next month to study English literature, drama and film studies.

SEE ALSO: Best photos as Portsmouth area students receive their GCSE results

About his time at Priory, he added: ‘There’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of difficulty, there are amazing, phenomenal moments and I really would not trade anything else for the time I had here.’

After not thinking about results day as much as possible, Euan Busby was pleased to walk away with two 8s, four 7s, two 6s, two 5s and two 4s.

He said: ‘I’m really happy today because I did get better than I expected and better than I could do in an exam because I might have got stressed on the day or something could have happened.’

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