The Island's private senior schools have released their GCSE results with early exam starts at one school and traumatic events for students at another appearing not to have had a dramatic effect on performance.

Bermuda High School for Girls came out top with almost 90 per cent of students achieving five or more "good" GCSE passes i.e. at grade C or above. Warwick Academy's pass rate was 85 per cent and Saltus Grammar School's was 69 per cent.

Warwick pupil Brian Gonzalez achieved perfect scores for his history and maths exams, putting him in the top ten per cent of students worldwide sitting the Edexcel board qualifications.

Warwick principal Maggie McCorkell said of Brian, who achieved 8A* grades and 1A grade overall:"This is an outstanding performance considering that Edexcel examinations are written in 85 countries by 9.6 million students."

Ross Hall, Edexcel's international director, said: "This is a tremendous achievement and testament to the hard work students put into preparing for their examinations. We send our congratulations to Brian Gonzalez."

Mrs. McCorkell said pupils had done extremely well in a year which saw the school lose two pupils in tragic circumstances 15-year-old Dakarai Tucker and 17-year-old Miguel Franco. Last year, the school achieved an 86 per cent pass rate.

"Warwick Academy students have achieved some of their best results in recent years in the GCSE and IGCSE (international GCSE)examinations and there were some outstanding individual performances," she said.

"This is a tremendous achievement from a year group who, at times, had to work under difficult and emotional circumstances.

"I am very proud of this entire year group and these excellent results bode well for the future academic success of these students."

The other students with the best grades at Warwick were Jason Saints (6A*, 3A), Kevin Minors (6A*, 1A), Charles Field (3A*, 7A), Christine Allison (5A*, 1A), Jordan Saints (4A*, 3A) and Ashley Berry (4A*, 4A passes).

At BHS, where some students had to take exams as early as 6.30 a.m, results were down on last year's 95.5 per cent pass rate. But Linda Parker, head of school, said:"For most students it didn't have a negative impact on them.

"I am pleased to report that our GCSE results are very good. I am very happy with these results. All of the students and teachers are to be warmly congratulated."

The top students at BHS, where 48 pupils sat GCSEs, were Catherine Campbell (5A*, 4A), Helen Crisson (5A*, 4A), Courtney Woodings (6A*, 2A, 1B), Emily Dunne (6A*, 1A, 2B), Rebecca Heyliger (3A*, 6A), Elizabeth Dunkerley (3A*, 5A, 1B) and Danielle Moniz (4A*, 4A, 1B).

The results at Saltus failed to match last year's 81 per cent pass rate. Headmaster Nigel Kermode said all 65 students in year 11 were entered for the exams and there was a wide range of abilities.

He said there were some notable performances from individual students and that the chemistry results where 11 of the 28 students who sat the exam got an A* and eight got an A were especially encouraging. In business studies the pass rate was 100 per cent and in physics it was 96 per cent.

The best performing students were:Rowan Border (7A*, 2A), Aisha Uduman (4 A*, 3A, 2B), Andreas Decker (6A*, 2A, 2B), Rochelle Williams (7A, 1B, 1C), Jacari Brimmer Landy (3A*, 4A, 1B, 1C) and Ksenjia Novakovic (3A*, 5A, 2B).

IThe Royal Gazette$ has been unable to obtain the GCSE results for the two public senior schools, CedarBridge Academy and the Berkeley Institute, despite requests to the Ministry of Education and the schools.