Students at a Brentwood school are "very happy" with their GCSE results after an unusual 18 months of studying.

Brentwood School pupils arrived at the school to open their GCSE results this morning (August 12), which were decided by schools in a bid to avoid the results day chaos caused by last year's controversial algorithm.

Student Abigail Rice received a clean sweep of twelve 9s and an A* in her HPQ, which she was hoping for.

Abigail said: "I was really nervous but it all worked out ok.

"It’s been a weird year. It was stressful because everything was so different.

"Remote learning was good. The school did a really good job, I took all of my lessons and I don’t feel like I struggled with that at all.”

Romford Recorder: Abigail Rice (l), Sammy Li and Sienna Singh (r) were pleased with their resultsAbigail Rice (l), Sammy Li and Sienna Singh (r) were pleased with their results (Image: Brentwood School)

Fellow student Sammy Li agreed: "Remote learning was alright.

"I was quick to adapt because I like doing all the technology stuff, so it was nice in that regard, but not seeing my friends was a little bit hard.”

Sammy had doing online international piano competitions during the summer, and gained twelve 9s and an A* in her HPQ.

Sienna Singh, who received ten 9s, one 8 and an A* in the HPQ, had a sleepless night in the lead-up to results day.

She will be studying A Levels in maths, further maths, physics and economics with a view to continuing economics at university.

Discussing remote learning during lockdown, she said: “It was OK but I found it quite hard to stay concentrating but Brentwood handled it probably better than most other schools. I know a lot of my friends elsewhere struggled a lot more.”

Headteacher Michael Bond congratulated the students after a "hard couple of years."

He said: "It’s lovely to see the emotion and relief in their faces this morning and they should celebrate their success despite what they’ve had to contend with."

"I’d also like to thank our fantastic teachers who have guided them through this period admirably, and all the staff at Brentwood who consistently put everything into making our students the best versions of themselves," he added.