STUDENTS at Varndean College are celebrating outstanding International Baccalaureate Diploma results.

Among the success stories is Maria Gureeva, from Burgess Hill, whose score of 44 points out of the maximum 45 has put her in the top one per cent of more than 90,000 IB students worldwide.

She is now going to study economics at Warwick University.

Maria shares her top spot with Naomi Crisp, from Shoreham, who is going to study linguistics at Oxford.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Brighton’s Varndean College offering the IB Diploma, which requires students to study six subjects.

Varndean’s 47 IB Diploma students averaged 36 points, which universities regard as equivalent to three A grades at A-level.

IB co-ordinator Dr Sean McEvoy, who led the programme for ten years, said: “The International Baccalaureate is certainly a challenge but it produces confident and articulate young people who know a lot about the world around them and can really think for themselves.

“It’s been a great pleasure.”