Excited shrieks of joy sounded through the hall at Plashet School as students broke their own records with the results of their GCSEs.

The girls at the East Ham specialist science college posted 74 per cent achieveing five or more A* to C grades in their GCSEs (including Maths and English). It marks an increase of two per cent on last year’s pass rate of 72 per cent.

There wer 82 per cent of students who gained five or more A* to C grades.

Head teacher Bushra Nasir, who will soon be leaving her post, said: “They are up from last year and I am really really pleased. I have been here 22 years, I have been head for 19 and this is the highest we have ever achieved. Our first result was 28 per cent.”

Mrs Nasir paid tribute to the hard work by both students and staff, many of whom have organised extra curricular study sessions in the evenings and at weekends.

Khadeejah Bepari from Plashet Grove is among the school’s top performers with 11A* and one A.

She said: “I wasn’t really expecting anything. Because the exams were so hard I thought I would do bad.”

She admitted she had been stressed at hearing the news about changes to the way English papers were to be marked.

She plans to study A Level Biology, Chemistry and possibly Physics or History.