HALF of Swindon Academy pupils did not manage to get a C grade at GCSE in maths.

Pupils at the recently opened school opened their envelopes behind closed doors at the academy on Thursday.

But yesterday principal Jan Shadick spoke exclusively to the Advertiser about her disappointment that just 50 per cent of pupils sitting the exams had achieved a C grade or higher in maths.

The Academy was set up to replace failing Headlands School.

But this year, the first year it had GCSE results, just nine per cent of students achieved five or more A* to C grades, including English and maths.

“I think it is very important we are open and honest,” said Ms Shadick.

“There are a lot of positives but, unfortunately, the key results in English and maths were not as good as we had hoped.

“The maths results have brought down our overall grades.

“In maths we have not achieved as we should have done.

“Because of the way the league tables prioritise key subjects our performance doesn’t look great.

“There is no excuse and we can’t hide our disappointment that we haven’t done as well as we wanted.

“But we will make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“This cohort of pupils is the last lot from the Headlands School.

“These pupils have been at two different schools during their secondary education: Headlands School and Swindon Academy.

“When they sat their paper, if it was a difficult paper, they may have been overwhelmed by that.”

Ms Shaddick said new, outstanding teachers would be starting at the academy in September.

She said extra hours of maths tuition would be added to the curriculum and pupils staying on into the sixth form would be encouraged to retake their exams to get the qualifications they need.

“We expect this time next year it will be a very different story,” she said.

Results from other academies sponsored by the United Learning Trust scored considerably higher than Swindon.

At ULT academies in Oxfordshire and Northampton-shire, almost a third of pupils got five GCSEs at grades A* to C.

Ms Shaddick stressed that the results were not a sign of a return to past failures at the Headlands campus.

“The confidence of these pupils is just being built up, so it would be a real shame for it to be knocked back down again,” she said. “There are some really positive things happening in key stage two, three and four. There is just one area of disappointment.

“These pupils have actually exceeded targets predicted from their year six results. But we were hoping to push them up further.

“About half of them got C and above in maths and obviously that is important.

“We are not down across the board. In fact across the board there has been an improvement.”

ULT deputy chief executive Charlotte Rendle-Short said: “Academies replace schools in very challenging circumstances and as such progress comes over time.

“Our results across the country this year show that transformation takes years rather than months but is well worth the wait.”