In October 1995 The Mail reported how Our Lady s Chetwynde School at Barrow, which had soared to success since it took over from a small convent school in 1984, had a new badge. The move linked Our Lady s, then an independent school, firmly with local history and nearby Furness Abbey. The school had just 100 pupils when taken over by a charitable trust and board of governors. It now had 500 children. A red marble statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus once stood in the school grounds, but was moved in the 1980s to the grounds of St Mary s RC Church in Duke Street, Barrow.
A Barrow school s tremendous GCSE results in 1992 were just the tip of the iceberg as far as successes went for its pupils. Results from Chetwynde School, at that time a fee-paying, independent school, were on a par with the prestigious Westminster School, according to a report in
The Mail in September that year. Chetwynde’s headteacher, Margaret Stones, said: “It’s a remarkable achievement. The pass rate is 100 per cent. We’re up there with the best of them.” A grade G counts as a pass, but none of the 43 Chetwynde pupils got anything less than E. Nine out of 10 pupils took eight or more subjects and 95 per cent of passes were at A, B or C – twice the national average.