It's not just for teens as mature students add maths GCSE to their bow
GCSE results day isn’t just for teenagers – and at Leeds City College two parents were among those celebrating getting the grades they needed. Kenny Knott, 38, already has A Levels, a 2:1 history degree and a 15-year career in the Army, plus seven in the reserves, under his belt.
But to pursue his dream of becoming a history teacher, he had to go back to education to get the “missing piece” in his qualifications, GCSE maths.
Mr Knott, who is married with an eight-year-old daughter, had to juggle family life and work with his studies but it has all paid off – as he discovered when he opened his results paper.
He said: “I’m over the moon. To get the grade five I was after is so emotional. Maths is hard, and it doesn’t get easier – algebra hasn’t changed since my school days.
“I just want to say thank you to Laurence Lennon and the team at Leeds City College, they’ve been amazing. I joined the Army at a young age, was with the Yorkshire Regiment 15 years, then did my A levels in a year and my history degree.
“But I want to teach history and I still needed my GCSE maths before I could do my training, so I came here.
“The staff, and especially Laurence, have been absolutely fantastic and were always at hand to help with anything I needed.”
Mr Knott, currently working as an Army Reserve recruiter, is now looking forward to starting his teacher training in Leeds next month. But first, celebrations were on his mind: “I needed to go to work but some alcoholic drinks were drunk later – as an adult student, I can do that!”
Another of the college’s mature students, Vitor Bonanca, was also celebrating. Mr Bonanca, who is also 38 and has two young children, was delighted to achieve a 9 grade in maths.
He said: “I have two babies at home and the youngest, who is four months, was born in the middle of my course so I couldn’t really study there much.
“But my wife supported me a lot with that and I come from a science background, so going to the maths class was kind of a pleasure to me. I’m really pleased with my grade – I was expecting a good one, but not necessarily a 9.”
He now plans to do a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
Overall fewer GCSE entries scored a decent pass this year following efforts to return results to pre-Covid levels.
Some 67.6 per cent of entries were awarded at least a 4 or a C grade – which is considered a “standard pass”, down by 0.6 percentage points on 2023 when 68.2 per cent achieved these grades.
In 2019 – the last year that summer exams were taken before the pandemic – 67.3 per cent of entries were awarded at least a 4 or a C grade, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications figures.
The figures have sparked fresh concerns that thousands more teenagers in England could be consigned to a “remorseless treadmill” of English and maths resits after failing to achieve a grade 4 or above.