Portsmouth dad who came to UK as Vietnam war refugee reduced to tears as City of Portsmouth College student secures Oxford University place with top A-level results

Jamie Ngo, 17, is celebrating gaining A*s in English literature and language, history, and politics - meaning he will be accepted to study History at the prestigious university.

The hard-working teen’s achievement follows disruption across the last three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that the most recent exams are the first Jamie and his peers have sat in more than five years.

Jamie said: ‘It’s been challenging not having sat an exam before - but it is just the hand we were dealt. As my first set of exams, I was really nervous, but I had confidence in the teaching we had.

‘I’m really looking forward to representing the community at Oxford.’

Proud dad Dzung, 53, came to the UK at the age of 10 as a refugee from the war in Vietnam - and never imagined his son would be destined for one of the best universities in the world.

The Copnor resident said: ‘When he opened his results I just grabbed him and started crying. It was a huge relief. Oxford - it’s an elite university, you hear about kids from Eton and places like that going there.

‘But Portsmouth school kids? You must be dreaming. But (today) shows what you can achieve with the right support and if you believe in yourself.’

Ecstatic Jamie was among more than 1,000 students receiving their results from City of Portsmouth College, which saw a 100 per cent pass rate across 20 courses out of 31, with 79.7 per cent of grades between A to C.

Fellow pupils celebrating their results were Joe White, 18, and Marianne Gajdosova, 19, who were both ‘really chuffed’ to turn around mock-exam results with U and E grades to Ds and Cs in business studies respectively.

Marianne said: ‘I got a D which is amazing - I thought I was going to fail. We had different teachers, our mocks went really bad. I was home in the Czech Republic for four months because I had Covid and schools were shut down. It was hard. But I think our college has done really well, we had loads of online lessons.’

Marianne plans to return home to the Czech Republic before starting a course in global challenges and cocial Cohesion at Brunel University.

Joe said: ‘I was expecting my business grade. We struggled every lesson. We worked our way up to these grades.’

Joe plans to study law at the University of Sussex.

Katy Quinn, principal at the college, praised students for their results despite all the disruption to their learning.

She said: ‘It’s been some challenge times for them throughout the year. I think this demonstrates how important the relationship between staff and students is.’

While praising the government’s support of additional funding, the education chief said that this support sometimes came with too many restrictions.

She added: ‘The money is hugely welcome, a little more freedom on how we can spend it would have been helpful. We’re the ones best placed to support students.’