A PROUD Barrow headteacher has congratulated students on a their "splendid" GCSE results.

Nervous 16-year-olds were relieved to finally rip open their GCSE envelopes and discover a host of top grades at Chetwynde School.

Heather Aitken was amazed with her eight A*s, which included a new grade nine and grade eight, and two As, including a grade seven.

The Barrow student said: "I'm really happy. I worked hard."

"I loved it at Chetwynde School. I'm really sad to leave because it has been amazing."

Heather is heading to Ulverston Victoria High School and she is considering studying law at university.

Liam Edgley, of Barrow, was equally delighted with his seven A*, including a grade nine, two As, including a grade seven and a grade six, a B.

He said: "I'm really happy with the results, I'm really proud of my maths result.

"Chetwynde is a really good school."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Congratulations?src=hash">#Congratulations</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Chetwyndeoffice">@Chetwyndeoffice</a>'s Heather Aitken 8A*s (inc 9&8) 2As & Liam Edgley 7A*s (inc 9) 2As (inc 7)1B (6) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GCSEResultsDay2017?src=hash">#GCSEResultsDay2017</a> <a href="https://t.co/f1CgewEKqu">pic.twitter.com/f1CgewEKqu</a></p>— Natalie Chapples (@nchapplesNWEM) <a href="https://twitter.com/nchapplesNWEM/status/900695100426252288">August 24, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Liam plans to study and Ulverston Victoria High School Sixth Form and go into an engineering career.

Both Heather and Liam have been involved in the National Citizen Service scheme this summer and said the social action programme has been a good distraction from waiting for results.

Sian Jeffreys, the head of school, said: "Chetwynde School is delighted to see our Year 11s achieve a splendid set of GCSE results with 82 per cent of them achieving at least a grade four in English and 70 per cent achieving at least a four in maths. Although all subjects achieved good results, particular mention must go to the separate sciences (biology, chemistry and physics) with 100 per cent gaining a C grade or above.

"We are exceptionally proud of all of our students, many of whom only joined us in the last two years.

"Our academic success goes hand in hand with the exceptionally good behaviour and pastoral care highlighted by our recent Ofsted inspection. Hard work, good results and exceptional behaviour start in our primary school and continue into Year Seven where 10 places are still available for this September."

This year the new 9-1 grading system is introduced in three GCSE subjects; maths, English Language and English Literature. The new scale will be phased in to all other GCSEs over the next two years to replace the A* - G gradings.

Big changes to GCSEs mean you can’t compare this year’s results to last, warns union