Nigerian Twin Sisters Shine In UK GCSE Exams

The Ark Globe Academy in Elephant and Castle in London was a few days ago celebrating its best ever results, with twin sisters from Nigeria part of the success story.

According to identical twins Kehinde and Deborah Sowole, 16, sibling rivalry spurred them on to achieve top grades, including a raft of eights in their exam which is the equivalent of WAEC in Nigeria.

Head teacher Matt Jones said: “This is the best progress the pupils have made in the school’s history …despite the increasing challenges and the rigour of the exams.”

Another outstanding student of the academy was Sara Sasvari, 16, who was among the highest achievers with eight top grades, and now wants to become a theoretical physicist.

Her success is even more remarkable as she moved to London from Hungary in 2014 and could not speak English. She has also been diagnosed with Stargardt Disease which affects her sight. She said: “I’m really happy and proud of myself. It’s been a lot of hard work.”

The GCSE results, which were released across the UK a few days ago, showed that girls are closing the gap on boys in maths and physics.

This year 15.2 per cent of girls taking maths were awarded top grades of either 7, 8 or 9 – equivalent to A or A* in the old qualifications – up from 14.7 per cent last year.

Meanwhile, the proportion of boys scoring top grades fell from 16.8 per cent last year to 16.6, meaning that the gap between boys and girls has now narrowed from 2.1 to 1.4 percentage points

Girls are catching up with boys in physics, where the gap has narrowed from 5.7 to 3.9 percentage points.

Boys are still winning a higher proportion of top grades (45.7 per cent) but girls increased their share of 7s, 8, and 9s from 39.6 per cent last year to 41.8 per cent this year.

Girls already outperform boys at chemistry and biology GCSEs as well as Computing despite the fact that more than three times as many boys take the subject than girls.

But computing is increasing in popularity among girls, and this year the number of female entries for the subject increased by 14.5 per cent compared to a 5.9 per cent increase for boys.

*Courtesy: telegraph.co.uk and standard.co.uk