The cife Academic Awards Ceremony is held each year in the prestigious venue of the House of Lords. This is at the invitation of The Lord Lexden, OBE, the Honorary President of cife, who invites cife students and their parents to its annual prize ceremony in the Cholmondeley Room of the House of Lords.
It was another beautiful afternoon on the terrace of the Palace of Westminster for award-winners and their families and college representatives to celebrate their successes.
Lord Lexden, who has been cife president since 2013, is an outstanding advocate for the highest standards of education and his encouragement of cife students is legendary amongst cife Principals. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge and, was a postgraduate researcher at Edinburgh University, and lectured at Queen’s University, Belfast. Lord Lexden has had a particular interest in British independent schools and colleges for many years and was General Secretary of the Independent Schools Council which accredits some 1,300 schools throughout the United Kingdom. Lord Lexden has been a Conservative member of the House of Lords since 2011 and was appointed one of its Deputy Speakers in 2017. Education is prominent among the subjects on which he speaks, and he seeks opportunities to highlight the remarkable success of cife colleges in enabling their talented students to gain places at leading universities.
Lord Lexden presents all the prizes, except for The Lady Perry Award, which is presented by Lady Perry, cife’s former president, herself.
Winners this year included:
- A Collingham College student who took 4 A levels and scored A* in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Biology and Imperial College where he is studying Biomedical Engineering. Another Collingham student took 10 GCSEs and scored a level 9 in every subject to secure the cife GCSE award.
- The MPW Cambridge student who attained 3 A* grades and collected the school’s literature prize for her remarkable achievement within the subject, which included 100% on her final literature paper and coursework that was specifically referenced in the moderator’s feedback for its originality and quality.
- The Ashbourne College student who secured offers from some of the UK’s most competitive medical schools, and is now reading medicine at Cambridge. Another Ashbourne student won the most prestigious cife Gold Award with five A* grades and a place to read Natural Sciences at Cambridge.
- Many students join cife colleges with well-established track records of academic excellence, whilst others have experienced challenging academic or personal circumstances. A feature of cife colleges is the extent to which students often achieve dramatic improvements in their results. This was characterised this year by an MPW London student lifting his grades from BDD to A*A*A*. Many students find they exceed their ambitions under the cife-style approach.
cife congratulates them all.