STUDENTS at Felixstowe were jumping for joy today as they opened their GCSE envelopes to find many of them had exceeded their expectations.There were some tears of disappointment, but on the whole the exam results were better than last year – bucking the national trend.

STUDENTS at Felixstowe were jumping for joy today as they opened their GCSE envelopes to find many of them had exceeded their expectations.

There were some tears of disappointment, but on the whole the exam results were better than last year – bucking the national trend.

At Orwell High School, Maidstone Road, teachers and students were celebrating an overall improvement in results for the third year running.

Headteacher David Forrest said: "We are very pleased. The results are better than last year and we had not been certain that they would be – but staff and students have put in an enormous amount of hard work and been rewarded.

"We now want to see if we can improve again next year. Our aspirations and hopes are high and we need to try to keep the impetus going and again work hard."

Subjects which saw particularly good results were textiles, German, geography and history, while there was continued improvement in English and science.

"We have had some very notable individual successes at both ends of the spectrum with some students getting a string of A's and A*'s, and others working incredibly hard to achieve passes which are very deserved and reflect the effort put in," added Mr Forrest.

Students at Deben High, Garrison Lane, were also receiving their results today, but no-one was available from the school to comment.