Last week almost six million young people collected their results after months of anticipation. For students across the country, picking up their GCSE results is one of the most important days of their educational career. This milestone lays the foundation for everyone’s future, influencing their immediate academic decisions, career pathways, and personal development. Notwithstanding the impact GCSE results can have on students, results are also hugely important for schools. As a critical performance metric, GCSE results are one of the top ways a school can build its reputation, across the sector and within the local community.
Set the narrative
We know that for many schools, promoting positive results can be quite low down on the list of priorities on results day. However, promoting the success of students and schools is an opportunity to demonstrate the effective teaching and learning delivered in your school and the impactful education students receive. It can also be useful for efficiently communicating your school’s message to the public to prevent it being shaped by third parties outside of your control.
Whatever the outcome of GCSE results day is at a school, there is always an opportunity to reflect on the successes. Taking into account the results you expect your GCSE cohort to achieve, you can produce a narrative which highlights the excellent work happening at your school. Whether it is celebrating having a higher than national average pass rate, a record number of students moving onto FE colleges for vocational and technical courses, individual achievements which reflect personal triumphs of overcoming adversity, or students achieving particularly well in a chosen subject, there are always elements of results which can, and should, be celebrated.
Results day
Some effective ways to promote results to the local community include:
Preparing a press release ahead of results day and pitching it out to local press on the day. Local publications often have A-level and GCSE results day live blogs which highlight local schools’ achievements. It is important to remember other schools in your region are likely to be promoting their results in the same outlets, putting your school at a disadvantage if you aren’t. Your press release can highlight how well your school has done compared to national averages and emphasise the standout achievements of individual students. Promoting the full range of accomplishments is important as it reflects a school’s diversity and the variety of offers it provides its students.
Celebrating results on social media is another effective method to promote a school’s GCSE results. Social media is an increasingly important medium through which schools should communicate with students, parents and the wider community. On results day thousands of students alike take to X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to celebrate their achievements. Schools would do well to replicate their students’ social media presence to generate buzz on the day and celebrate the achievements of students.
Letters to stakeholders can also be an effective tool to communicate results. If a cohort has had a particularly strong set of results, whether the results are above the national average, or a significant improvement year-on-year, it is useful to communicate this to a school’s key stakeholders including parents, the local Member of Parliament, and the school’s Regional Director of Education.
Of course, it is important to not lose sight of the most important aspect of results day, which is supporting students to achieve to the best of their ability. This cohort of GCSE students has been
through a tumultuous education; they were in Year 7 when the pandemic hit, isolating most at home in the first few years of secondary school. The well-known impact this has had on personal development, academic progress, and the attainment gap means these students have overcome massive challenges, and their successes should be widely celebrated.
