The evening of the 17 December saw students, parents, guardians and close friends of the College congregate for our annual Certificate Presentation Evening. This event was a chance to celebrate the wonderful achievements of the Class of 2015, catch up with friends and teachers and recognise those individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the College. On arrival, musical entertainment was provided by the College’s own Jazz Ensemble.

The Class of 2015 attained amazing exam results, with a 98.8% pass rate across 44 subjects. Almost a third of all A level grades were awarded at either A* or A, with a remarkable 81.3% of A2 taught courses graded A* to C. In addition, our students contributed a huge number of hours to volunteering projects (between 2014 and 2015, students contributed 32,000 hours!).

Our guest of honour for the evening was Adam Stewart, UK & Ireland Manager for Google for Education. He has been a valuable friend in our adoption of Google technologies and has enabled us to become both a 'Trusted Tester' for new Google technologies and a 'Google Reference School' so as to share our Google practice with other institutions. Adam gave a brilliant presentation to our students about the vast opportunities available to them after leaving College and we got a sneak preview of new technologies that Google are currently developing.

The following are the Class of 2015 Special Award winners - those whose achievements or contribution to College life can justifiably be described as ‘outstanding’. The College is grateful for the generous support of the sponsors who shared the evening with us:

The Outstanding Academic Achievement awards were presented to Katie Hammond, Owen Jones, Linden Schrecker, and Leila Vickers.

Awards for Outstanding Personal Achievement were given to Ayyub Abdulwahid, Samuel Blackwell, Clare Braganza, Joshua Colton, Adam Grose, Kimberley Key, Katherine Landsbert, Zanya Smith, Amina Wahid and Lauren Waring.

The following students were presented the award for Outstanding Contribution to College Life: Cameron Aughterson, Edward Behan, Lucy Berry, Zoe Bradley, Ashleigh Knight, Alexander Langedijk, Lai Man, Ellen McElhatton, Josephine Partridge-James, Liliana Real, Lydia Roberts and Lidea Sullivan.

The Accelerate Young Driver of the Year Award is given to a student who has adopted a diligent approach and recorded commendable test scores. Founder of Accelerate Driver Training, Rob Tillier presented the award to Philip Roberts.

Madeline Jewell received The Stephen Green Musical Volunteer of the Year Award recognising her participation in almost every ensemble and the myriad of performances that took place, as well as her engagement in the Music department’s wider community links.

Our newest award, The Steinburg Award for Excellence in Music Technology, was presented to Nathan Guy, an exemplar student in the subject, consistently going ‘above and beyond’ expectations. As part of this award, Nathan received the latest Steinburg music software package.

The University of Winchester Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Community were presented to Alice Bolton and Sophie Waite for their work with our Pass IT On programme. The award was also presented to Matthew Cornell for his work with local charity ‘LinkAble’.

The Fujitsu Arts Award went to Tessa Pritchard, who demonstrated enthusiasm and commitment to all three of the art courses she studied, achieving two A*’s and a B grade at A2.

The Community Matters Partnership Project Student Volunteer of the Year Award was awarded to Ranit Ghosh, who completed nearly 200 hours of volunteering in the local community throughout his time at College!

Neil Sharma, a student who had a remarkable two years at College and is someone who showed outstanding academic achievement and personal development during his time with the College, received The Fujitsu Progression Award.

The Fluor STEM Student of the Year Award was presented to Emily Daborn, who achieved 3 A*s at A2 in Chemistry, Maths and Further Maths, as well as an A in Physics. Emily is now studying Chemical Engineering with a year abroad at Imperial College.