A HIGH school celebrated its best GCSE results at its annual awards ceremony.

Pleckgate High School achieved a 61 per cent pass rate for grades A* to C, including English and maths in August.

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The Lancashire Telegraph secondary school of the year celebrated individual results, sporting and community successes at the ceremony.

Tracy Sheldon, corporate global leader and entrepreneur was the guest speaker at the awards.

Headteacher Mark Cocker said 2016 had been a superb year for Pleckgate as they ‘welcomed in a new era, which included becoming an academy and a rebranding of the popular school’.

He said: “In 2016, we had our best ever GCSE results, we were in the top five schools nationally for schools with prior attainment and we have been hailed ‘a beacon of success’ as well as being crowned Lancashire Telegraph Secondary School of the Year.

“We are not just an exam factory though and while we have had fantastic academic success, sport and community achievements in all different year groups have also been recognised.”

The special headteacher’s award went to Aysha Sultan, who started at Pleckgate in Year Nine and could not speak a great deal of English but left the school with seven A*s and four As.

“She also gave her time to help other students and parents who couldn’t speak a lot of English. We are so proud of her achievements,” Mr Cocker said.

Aysha also won the physics prize for achieving the highest physics mark out of the entire year group.

Safwan Hassan won the science prize, achieving A*s in the three science subjects while he also won a GCSE prize for his outstanding results.

John Perry, Sanaa Dayaji, Yamin Banglawala and Aisha Hanif also collected GCSE awards for their impressive grades.

As well as sporting awards, community prizes were also given out with the school raising £7,000 so far this year for charity.

Last year’s year sevens raised cash for the Royal British Legion, for water pumps in Syria and took part in a Readathon to buy books for children in hospital.

This year they organised a dodgeball event for Derian House.

Tracy Sheldon, who was brought up on a council estate and now runs the multi-million pound company, Brug Consultancy said: “I have been so inspired by the students here.

“They are the future and they have the ability to go into life and change the world.”