A teenager who helped local residents all night as the Grenfell Tower inferno blazed and sat an exam the next morning said he was ‘a bit gutted’ after receiving his results.
Rory Walsh, 18, spent all night co-ordinating the mass of donations and helped families driven from their homes find shelter – despite his English poetry exam just hours away on the horizon.
The teenager – who was hoping for a C and said he would be doing ‘backflips’ if he got a B – received a D grade for his English Literature and Language A-level, a D for Film Studies and a D for AS media studies.
Rory Walsh, who stayed up all night helping Grenfell Tower victims on the night of the fire and then sat an A-level exam the next day
The teenager is pictured in a refuge centre on June 14 after the fire with donations and volunteers behind him
Speaking after his results, he said: ‘I feel a bit gutted, I was hoping for a bit more, especially as I was supposed to get special consideration, I thought it would have been at least a C.’
After a ‘numb, hectic, tragic’ night Rory, who lives near to the North Kensington tower block, made the one hour trek across London to Richmond College in Twickenham, west London.
But as he picked up his pen all his notes went out of his head, and everything was a ‘blank’, leaving after around 35 minutes to continue the relief effort and refusing extra time.
He said: ‘I wasn’t going to go at first. When I saw the severity of it… I thought ‘what if it collapses, I should stay here in case something happens’.
Applications for ‘special consideration’ were made by schools in Kensington and Chelsea after the Grenfell Tower fire in June
‘But then my family and my friends were saying ‘just go and do the test, try and get your mind off it, at least you can say you attempted it’.
‘The problem was, on the journey I was getting mates ringing me saying ‘are you alright’, knowing I lived there, and then people were posting videos of the actual fire and it was a bit off-putting.’
Rory, who took English because he wanted the possibility of a teaching career, is currently training to be a personal fitness trainer, and one day hopes to open his own gym.
Asked if he would make the same decision to help he said: ‘Definitely yeah, a grade’s not worth more than that. I’d definitely do the same thing again.
‘I don’t want to play the victim. The people who lived in that building – they were cheated, whether it was from life or the opportunities or doing their best.
‘I only saw it but coming out of that – if I had to come out of that and do an exam I couldn’t have done it, no way.’
Schools and Kensington and Chelsea Council have been working to ensure pupils who took exams in the wake of the high-rise blaze will have their grades reviewed to ensure their higher education prospects are not compromised by the tragedy.
Pupils will have their grades ‘looked at, reviewed and modified accordingly if necessary’, while there will be access to counselling and mental health support on results days and when they start their new school terms in September.
Many applications for ‘special consideration’ were made by schools during the summer term following the fire, in which at least 80 people perished.
These include Sion Manning secondary school, Sacred Heart secondary school, and Kensington Aldridge Academy (KAA), which is located in the shadow of the tower.
KAA, which sits at the foot of the 24-storey block in west London, saw 62% of all its AS-level entries achieve grades A-C.
Sixth-form students secured an average of one whole grade higher than national expectations, positioning it to be in the top 10% of a key government measure on value, it said in a statement.
Four current students and one pupil who had left the school recently died alongside at least 75 others when flames ripped through the tower in June.
Despite the academy being forced to close after it was caught at the centre of the devastation, 56 of its teenagers still sat their maths mechanics paper on the morning of the fire.
Rory – who was hoping for a C and said he would be doing ‘backflips’ if he got a B – received a D grade for his English Literature and Language A-Level, a D for Film Studies and a D for AS media studies
More than 80 per cent of students taking English, French, history and drama gained A-C grades, the school said.
‘These results would be important in any year, but coming so shortly after Grenfell they are particularly welcome,’ it said in a statement.
‘This remains a very difficult time for our community but our exam success shows that, even in very difficult circumstances, our students and staff are resilient and capable of achieving the very best. Both our school and our sponsors, Aldridge Education, are very proud of the results they have all achieved.’
Schools in the neighbourhood had been working alongside Kensington and Chelsea Council to ensure pupils who took exams following the tragedy had grades reviewed.
Counselling and mental health support were also said to be available on results day and when the school term begins in September.
Kai Chappell, head boy of Kensington Aldridge Academy who volunteered with the relief effort in the days following the disaster, said: ‘I’m really happy and proud of my results day, and there are lots of smiling faces around today which is really great to see.’
Another student, Amin Hashemi, added: ‘I’m so happy with my results, especially given the difficult circumstances. I can’t wait to tell my mum.’