Passing your GCSEs is hard enough, but for some Guernsey schoolchildren they’ve had to study for exams while going through a school merger.
Now the Headteacher of the new school, Les Varendes High School, has praised her pupils who received their GCSE results this week.
La Mare de Carteret High School closed in July 2025, with students joining their peers at Les Varendes High School, which replaced the former Guernsey Grammar School after it was closed when the 11+ was scrapped in 2018.
Verona Tomlin was Head of La Mare de Carteret High School before its merger with Les Varendes, when she became Head of the new, larger school.
Pupils at Les Varendes High received their GCSE results yesterday with some high achieving students among them.
Ms Tomlin said they had all worked hard and deserved their grades.
“They’ve had a slightly different experience, but ultimately the things that we do for every single child is to make sure that we help them to fulfil their potential, and that’s not just done by myself.
“We have a whole body of staff that work really hard to support our students with the support of their families and their own hard work.”
Acknowledging that not all students will have been pleased with their grades, Ms Tomlin said that was not down to the merger of the schools – which had previously detracted from the pupils’ achievements.
“The children here can be successful, even despite the merging,” she said.
“There’s been quite a lot of talk about schools closing, schools merging, and education systems changing since I moved to the island in 2012, and there’s been all sorts of things happening, but ultimately, we are educators, and this job is not the easiest job.
“It’s one of the most rewarding jobs, and I don’t think I’d want to do anything other than what I’m doing at the moment.
“And no matter what system, whether we’re merging schools, closing schools, or whatever, I know that we are here for our students, and we will go to the end to make sure that they are successful.”
Where students haven’t done as well as they hoped, at Les Varendes or any other school in the Bailiwick, Ms Tomlin said support is available.
“We have the College of FE on site, and they’re doing one-to-one interviews with the students at the moment, which is really good. Some students will go away with their families, they’ll reflect, and some students will look at their results and see they’ve got better than predicted, so there’s decisions to be made there.
“Those students who didn’t quite hit the grades that they needed for post-16 progression, they can still contact us even throughout September, October,” she explained.
“We do something called tracking, so we look at children who are not in employment, education, and training. So all these children, even though they have finished with us as a school, they are still our children until 31st October and we will track, we will monitor them, see what they’re doing. Our careers teachers will be phoning home. And if they’re not in employment, education, or training-we will help them.”
Ms Tomlin said this next stage is vitally important for students who need this support, as they continue on their own journey.
“That’s what we’re here for,” she said.
“Being such a small community, this is one of our biggest year groups. We’ve got 178 children in this year group, and ultimately, our job is to make sure that every single child gets to wherever their next destination is, and if they didn’t quite get the results needed for that, it’s not that we just say goodbye to them, we will continue to support them.
“The amount of conversations that we have post exam results is significant. There is this myth that teachers get six week holidays – we don’t.
“Results come in, and we know that children need us, and they have our email addresses, they will contact the office.
“We pick up our emails, and we will respond, so if a child says to us or a parent says to us, ‘we’re not quite sure what to do’, we’ve got the careers centre as well, they have drop-ins, so there are lots and lots of opportunities for that guidance, just to make sure that every single child knows what they’re doing.”
