Castle Rushen High School headteacher Keith Winstanley talks about the school's A-Level results

Tindle News

Transcript

00:00So do you mind telling me your name and your role within Castle Russian?

00:03Yeah, hi I'm Keith Winstanley, I'm head teacher.

00:06And obviously it's results more than this morning for A Levels.

00:09How have the students been? You know, they've come in to get their results.

00:11Are most of them happy? Are they from the ones you've seen?

00:14Yeah, very much so. Probably the earliest most of them have got up this summer.

00:18But it's been lovely to see them all, all looking very, you know, grown up and ready for the next

00:23chapter of their respective sort of life stories. But yes, generally speaking,

00:28A Levels results are really good here at Castle Russian this year. We're really pleased.

00:31It's the last of our smaller cohorts with all the new build that's been through,

00:35been happening in the south of the island and the immigration that we've had with our

00:40sick form cohorts going to be an awful lot bigger going forward.

00:44But these guys have made a significant and very positive impact to the school.

00:47And I think today it's quite rightly about A Level qualifications and grades and results

00:52and whether they're into university and all the rest of it.

00:55But actually, it's a culmination of seven years hard work by the whole team here at Castle

00:59Russian. So yes, it's about knowledge and it's about exam results, but it's also about skills

01:04and attributes. And I like to think that the youngsters who are here collecting results today,

01:08after seven years with us, are really, really well equipped for the modern world

01:11and can go and do whatever they really want to do.

01:13Yeah. Have any students spoken to you about what they do plan to go and do in terms of university?

01:17Yeah, we've definitely seen an upturn in UK university applications and ambitions again this year.

01:26I think following Covid, there was a little bit more uncertainty and

01:30more students were looking at the job market here in the Isle of Man at 18.

01:34And some still do. And that's very buoyant and there's some very worthwhile and good careers

01:40available here on the island. But what we've seen is more and more are now looking back to UK

01:45universities as their sort of first choice destination. And we've got the vast majority of

01:51them there. And there's a couple through Clearing today who are, you know, they've still got decent

01:54grades. Yeah. So that they'll go through, I'm quite sure, into courses that they quite fancy.

01:59Yeah. Obviously, A Level Results Day, I think these days, people can get the results online.

02:04They don't need to come into the school. But do you still see quite a lot of students

02:07coming into the school to sort of speak to other students and get the results?

02:10Yeah. I mean, well, you've seen it for yourself, Adam. It's perhaps not quite the same sort of

02:14queuing at the door at half eight that we used to have. But they only can get online whether or not

02:20they've been successful with their UCAS application. So their grades still have to be collected in person.

02:24That's dependent on the exam award in body, the qualification. But no, generally speaking,

02:31these Level 3, A Level equivalents have to be collected. Certainly the detail often has to

02:35be collected in school. Yeah. So looking forward then just to school in general,

02:39how are things at the moment? Are you all doing okay? Yeah, we're well here. As I say,

02:43we're bigger than ever. I think we'll be close to a thousand students, which is a lot larger than

02:49certainly when I took over a decade ago. So the school's grown significantly. But we like to think

02:55that we continue to improve and strive and refine our offer. And as you can see today is the culmination

03:00of all that hard work. Yeah. As I say, the wider staff team, you know, that's got larger as well.

03:07And we're all pulling in the same direction. And the students, as I say, you know, really have sort of

03:12high ambitions and we have high expectations of them when those two forces kind of coalesce,

03:17it really does produce some fantastic results. Yeah. Amazing.

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