Aberdeen school achieves best Higher results in Scotland

By Calum Petrie

October 5 2022, 5:00 pm

Best in Scotland: A Freedom of Information request made to the SQA showed that 96.9% of exams sat by Albyn pupils this year resulted in A to C grades.

An Aberdeen school is celebrating after achieving the best Higher results in Scotland.

Albyn School is the top-performing mainstream state or independent school in the country at Higher level.

A Freedom of Information request made to the SQA showed that 96.9% of exams sat by Albyn pupils this year resulted in A to C grades.

Head teacher Stefan Horsman said he was “absolutely delighted”, and paid tribute to the hard work of both pupils and staff.

Best Higher results of 400 schools

“It’s an exciting feeling to know that we’re number one of almost 400 state and independent mainstream schools in Scotland,” he said.

“Sometimes we take results in schools like ours for granted. But it has taken a great deal of work from everybody.

“Because we’re not a very big school, we’re able to give that time and care and attention to each individual pupil.

“This means that we’re really on top of every child’s progress and making sure each individual is fulfilling their potential.

“Attention to detail and being able to have those conversations with each and every pupil has been key.”

‘A defining feature of Albyn’

Another element of success is a harder one to measure but equally important.

“There’s a sense of togetherness, a sense of community, that I haven’t witnessed in the schools I’ve worked in previously,” said Mr Horsman.

‘Albyn is a family’: Head teacher Stefan Horsman said a sense of togetherness was a ‘defining feature’ of the school.

“We recently had a reunion of former pupils and many of them talked about seeing Albyn as a family. There’s that close-knitness. They remember it as this tight unit that gels.

“That warmth and togetherness is not something I noticed at the four schools I’ve worked at before. And they were all top-performing schools.

“It’s a defining feature of Albyn.”

All but one pupil got into university of choice

Despite the accolade of Scotland’s top school at Higher, Mr Horsman said it wasn’t the be all and end all. And he said there were better measures of school success.

“We don’t set out to get ‘top spot’. I wasn’t aware that SQA data was being collated in this way.

“Being at the top isn’t the be all and end all. But being there does make all the hard work absolutely worthwhile. It’s a nice thing to be able to say.

“But I think there are even better measures of whether every individual child has fulfilled their potential.

“Of all S6 pupils, only one didn’t get into their university of choice.

“And over half of Fifth Years got five A’s at National 5, which is the benchmark for courses like medicine and law and so on. That in particular is something I’ve not seen before at other schools in Scotland.”