The kidnap victim

Alex Griffiths, 18, was kidnapped from hospital when she was a baby. In a strange way, she owes her A Level success today to that terrible event.

Her story made headlines around the world as police searched for the woman responsible. She was eventually returned to her mother Dawn, safe and well after three weeks.

Her traumatic start to life provoked such huge interest that The Sun newspaper paid her mother £110,000 for the story.

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Dawn put it in a trust fund to pay for her daughter’s education, and sent her each term from the council estate in Middlesbrough where they live to a top boarding school, Polam Hall, in Darlington.

Today she gained an A and two Bs in Maths, Further Maths and Drama as well as two AS Levels in Business and General Studies. As a result, she won a place at Manchester University to study Maths.

Alex said: “It’s strange to think that I probably wouldn’t have done as well as I did if I hadn’t been kidnapped when I was a baby.”

The Olympic translator

Jenny Quan heard she had got six straight As at A-Level while back home in Beijing working as a translator for British athletes.

Ms Quan, who is going on to study natural sciences at Cambridge, boarded at Badminton School, in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol.

The 18-year-old took physics, biology, chemistry, maths, further maths, and Chinese before volunteering as a translator for Great Britain’s Olympic squad.

Jan Scarrow, headmistress at Badminton, said she was thrilled with Jenny’s success. “Badminton is bucking the trend as many of our girls take sciences at A-level - in fact chemistry is one of our most popular A-level subjects and nearly 70 per cent of our pupils gained grade As this year."

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