A level students and staff at the FE Provider of the Year, Exeter College, have continued a year of record breaking news with today's announcement of a 99.4% pass rate.

Students from across Exeter, Devon and Torbay choose to study A levels at this leading college and almost half of this year's 691 young people taking A2 exams achieved Grades A*, A or B grades, which will enable most of them to progress to top universities in the future.

In the Year 12 cohort 1125 students took AS levels and achieved a pass rate of over 90%, with a 5% increase in the numbers achieving the top A and B grades, which suggests more record breaking results in 2014

With these results Exeter will continue to rank amongst the country's top Sixth Form Colleges, as illustrated by an exceptional 107 A* grades at A Level.

Richard Atkins, Principal said, “Today's results are superb! We remain committed to supporting the progress of all our students and our relentless drive to improve teaching and learning is balanced by the enormous range of our enrichment activities, for example our record number of 99 students currently working towards the challenging Duke of Edinburgh Award. These outstanding A level results mean that our students are ideally placed to progress to the UK's top competitive universities.”

Commenting on the significant improvement in the Year 12 AS results Richard Atkins, continued, “We are delighted with the AS results and these hard-working groups of students and future students will all benefit from the development of an additional A level learning centre from this autumn and our recent acquisition of National House in Queen Street, which will become a Regional Centre of Excellence for A level Computing, Maths and Science in 2015.”

Students taking the popular Maths and Science subjects particularly excelled, with half of the 132 students taking A level Maths gaining impressive A and A* grades whilst 19% of Physics students gained the highest A* grade and a third of Chemistry students gaining A or A* grades.

Other key results included Modern Foreign Languages students recording 100% pass rate; every student who took English Literature – 378 in total – being successful at both AS and A2 level and all four Art A level subjects at the college recording 100% pass rates.

Individual success stories spanned from Tavistock to Exmoor, and from Torrington to Sidmouth with straight A grade students excelling regardless of travel journey times to college. Many of these students are now planning to progress to prestigious universities across the UK.

Emma Fielding, the College's new Assistant Principal responsible for A levels has had a journey of her own, having recently joined Exeter College from a 6th form college in Sussex. “I am very impressed with these results,”said Emma “It is clear to me that students here at Exeter College join both an academically rich programme and can take additional opportunities such as the Extended Project which, with a record of 62% A or A* grades this year, greatly enhances their chances in the race for the top university places.”

“I'd like to congratulate all the students and staff at Exeter College who have worked so hard this year,”said Richard Atkins. “Today is about A level results, but we continue to demonstrate inclusivity in the range of students we attract from across the county and the wealth of subjects we offer. We celebrated excellent International Baccalaureate results in July and over 600 students are awaiting their BTEC vocational results, which will be their essential passport to continue on to the universities or employers of their choice. These results are a culmination of a truly outstanding year and, once more, individual students from across Exeter, Devon and Torbay have fulfilled, and in many cases exceeded, expectations and we wish them all well in the next stage of their careers.”