Students at Windermere School are celebrating today after the Class of 2021 achieved the highest International Baccalaureate (IB) mean result in the School’s history, with a ninety- six per cent pass rate.

Despite the global pandemic and the challenges presented by remote learning, the School’s mean IB result this year was 36.3, the world average is currently 33.0. Since 2017, when Windermere School was named The Sunday Times IB School of the Year, the School has continued to build on its success in presenting candidates for the IB Diploma. This year, twenty students (71.4%) gained 34 points or more in the IB Diploma, with over 75% of students immediately securing their first-choice courses at prestigious universities.

A total of forty students sat the IB this year. Twenty-eight of the cohort were Diploma students, nine of whom (31%) will claim their place on the School Honour Board, which recognises IB students who achieve 40 points or more.  Local student Grace King achieved the maximum score of 45 points, Emmie Annand, Jack Keane, Luey Machell, William Turner and Rachael Aylmore gained 43 points. Archie Bennett, Elsie Jones and Bartek Kuklinski achieved 41 points. These are extraordinary achievements, as only 7% of IB candidates globally achieve more than 40 points.

Grace King and Rachael Aylmore secured places at Durham University to read Mathematics and Business and Management, respectively. Several students are heading to the University of Exeter, including Emmie Annand (Liberal Arts), Harvey Dalzell (History and Archaeology), Elsie Jones (Psychology) and Luey Machell (PPE). Bartek Kuklinski and Jack both secured firm choices to study Mathematics at St Andrews and UCL, respectively.

Headmaster, Ian Lavender said, “I am especially pleased to announce that the IB results published this morning are the best such results in the history of Windermere School. The IB continues to be moderated internationally, and despite the difficulties of 2021, we have obtained our best mean score ever of 36.3 points. This is an exceptional accomplishment for a small, non-selective school. Our staff go above and beyond to ensure that our students achieve more than they might have thought possible, and this has certainly been the case with the examination results that have been published today.”