A-level results day started early at Highgate School - some students opened their envelopes at 6AM - as yet another year group smashed records to achieve the best results in the school’s history.

Thirty-nine per cent of all grades were A*s, wthile 68 pc of students got at least one A*.

Adam Pettitt, the school’s headteacher, said: “These results are our best ever, and we’re proud to be celebrating that.

“We believe that we’re seeing the benefit of an exam system which is as closely aligned as we have seen in a decade with the way we wish to teach: give students two years to dig deep into a subject they really love, and let teachers loose to explore the subject before they home in on exam technique, and you find yourself using intellectual curiosity as the motor for hard work.”

Maisie Pedder and Alexa Chambers, both 18, were among the 34 Highgate School pupils to get only A*s, getting four each.

Maisie who is holding an offer to study medicine at Cambridge but trying to change subjects, told the Ham&High: “It was a bit tricky doing the new exams simply because there was only one past paper, Maisie said if she can’t change to do natural sciences instead, she’ll probably take a year out and reapply, though she added. “Really don’t know what I’ll do in the mean time though!”

Alexa’s going to study Engineering at Worcester College, Oxford. She said: “It’s been a really challenging two years. We’ve had so many moments where we’ve worried about getting the grades, or whether we’d be able to get in to uni. But I think today we weren’t too nervous, by now we’d done all we could do...”

Now though, the pair are looking forwards. Alexa added ”The first thing I’m excited about is a trip to IKEA. We’ve already organised that we’re going to go together, and then well at uni we’ll have things like freshers’ week to get through.”