Petchey Academy pupils were celebrating some of their best A-level results yet this morning.

Star pupil Chantel Singh was one of them, delighted that she had pulled off three As in biology, chemistry and maths.

She puts her success down to flat-out hard work - which her biology teacher Sarah March testified to.

"I've never seen a kid work so hard," she told the Gazette.

"I've been doing 12-hour revision sessions for nine months," added Chantel.

"I've always cared about my education and no one can ever take my grades away from me.

"I was motivated really badly. When I saw what marks I'd got I was so pleased my heart just came back into my chest."

Despite her top marks she hasn't made any plans to celebrate tonight.

"I'll probably go home and sleep," she said.

"I only got three hours sleep last night. You work so hard for two years and I didn't want to get Bs."

She's looking forward to studying biomedical science at Manchester.

"I want to go into embryology. When I was finishing high school I saw a lady on TV working in a lab and I thought, "I want to do that". She was a female doctor and you don't see many on TV, and it's a nice way to help people too."

Yasin Regal was also thrilled with triple distinction in his BTEC business diploma. He's going on to study business management at Brunel University.

"I've always wanted to know how businesses are run and what it takes behind the scenes to make a successful business. Firstly it comes from hard working employees with the same ambitions to make their business succeed," he said.

Head of sixth form at the school in Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, Sonia Green, thinks the results are the best yet at Petchey.

"We are so, so pleased," she said. "All our year 13 have finished with at least three qualifications and at least three grades at A* to E.

"We have lots of really good news stories but they are personal stories of students that have had a really tough year with of other mitigating circumstances with issues going on outside of school.

"It's tough being a teenager and there are lots of issues with mental health, and those students that we have given a lot of support to over the past two years have comes out with fantastic results.

"Of course we can put in front of the cameras the students that have got As and A*s which is obviously just as great, but sometimes it's those ones that you don't know about that are important too.

"It means we've done our job."

BTEC results in business, computer science or health and social care at the sixth form are "way above the national average" apparently.

"Pupils have come out with distinction star star star, which is the equivalent of three A*s, and they have fantastic places at Russell group universities. It's important to stress that it's not only about A-levels now.

"There's a lot of stigma around the BTEC but they are more challenging this year because there are exams as well as the coursework."