Shropshire Star

WATCH: Shropshire student opens GCSE results 3,000ft up

For most students picking up their GCSE results, the anticipation of opening the brown envelope containing their grades was enough.

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Holly Harris prepares to open her results in the glider

But one student from Church Stretton School decided to open hers 3,000ft in the air.

Holly Harris went straight to the top of the Long Mynd, where she jumped in a glider and took to the sky.

After keeping her results sealed, she waited until she was circling the Shropshire hills before opening the envelope and radioing the results to her family back on the ground.

The 16-year-old documented her dramatic day last week in a video she made and posted on YouTube.

WATCH the video here:

She said: “I wasn’t in a hurry to open them, so waiting until I was in the sky wasn’t too much of a problem.

“I was very nervous about it but concentrating on filming it and of course being in the glider took the edge off it a little.

“I was more worried about dropping the camera than looking at my results.

“A lot of my friends that did similar subjects all did very well, so considering I had decided to make a video out of it I was hoping for the best.

“The glider has a window on it anyway so my backup plan was to throw them out the window if they weren’t looking good, but thankfully it didn’t come to that.”

Holly has been gliding since she was young

Under the newly introduced one to nine marking system, Holly achieved eights in biology, chemistry, physics, English, art and geography, and a seven in maths, equivalent to six A*s and an A.

“I’m very surprised with how I did, especially chemistry. There’s a few I was expecting to see and a couple I wasn’t, but overall I’m very pleased with how I did,” she added.

Holly joined Midland Gliding Club when she was 14, and after spending hours under the tuition of instructors, can now fly her own glider solo.

“One night before my exams started I started looking on YouTube for other people’s results videos,” she said.

“My brother, who’s also started learning to fly, suggested it would be a good idea to do this so I decided I would. I thought it would be an unusual thing to do and also great advertisement for an amazing club.”

Holly is now off to study physics, maths, art and photography.