The top performing state schools at A level

A levels by subject

Royal Family has its highest achiever

Princess Beatrice may now plausibly claim to be the cleverest member of the Royal Family. Her A and two Bs beat the record set in 2000 by Prince William with an A, a B and a C, a record that had withstood the efforts of his brother Prince Harry, who managed a B and a D to scrape into the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. A generation before, the Prince of Wales had set the royal academic bar with a B and a C, fending off a challenge from the Princess Royal who achieved a D and an E. In 2000, Buckingham Palace refused to disclose the results of the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex, claiming that “the examinations were harder then”.

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Equalling sister’s seven

Yesterday morning Alex Sobolev woke in a cold sweat from a dream in which he failed his A levels. In fact he passed all seven, with A grades. He also passed Grade 8 examinations in piano and organ. Alex said: “My dad and mum are both maths teachers – from an early age I got it hammered into me.” His older sister had achieved seven A grades at the same school, Brighton College. Alex is to study history at Oxford.

Game, set and match

The day that Karen Hird sat her A-level Spanish oral examination she was also due to play real tennis in the World Championships in Manchester. Yesterday she was celebrating having achieved four As and a B with her triplet siblings – Robert, who achieved 6 As, and Sarah, 5 As. Sarah is going to Oxford University and Robert and Karen have places at Cambridge University.

10 As not good enough

Jos Gibbons, 18, from Solihull, Warwickshire, who was awarded ten As and one B in his A levels, has requested that the B grade paper, in biology, be remarked. Jos found A levels “pretty easy”, but he did not believe that examinations were getting easier. “You can’t compare results from different years in that way because there are so many variables,” he said. Jos is to study physics at Keble College, Oxford.

Maths at 13 ‘quite easy’

Terrence Linnell, from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, is 13: yesterday he was told he had gained an A in A-level maths. “It was quite easy but it was challenging at times,” he said. Terrence’s maths A level follows an A grade in the subject at AS level last year and an A* grade at GCSE, which he achieved at the age of 10. In Newport, Wales, Harry Williams, 80, one of this year’s oldest students, received an A level in law.

Refugee’s achievement

Two years ago Jean Masanyero spoke barely a word of English when she fled Zimbabwe with her mother. Yesterday she was awarded three A levels at grade C, in biology, maths and chemistry. She combined her studies with caring for her younger brother. “I don’t care if people say A levels are getting easier,” Ms Masanyero, 20, at City of Bristol College, said. “This is the biggest achievement of my life.”

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