TWO girls from the same Swindon school have finished among the top five pupils in the country in their GCSE exams.

Joanna Segesser and Claudia Woszczyk, both 16, are pupils at St Joseph's RC School in Nythe Road and finished among the elite in the subjects of Religious Education and English respectively.

Joanna, of Field Drive, Old Town, said she thought she was in trouble when headteacher Peter Wells phoned her at home to tell her of her exam triumph.

He told her she had come in the top five out of the 49,761 pupils who sat the RE exam in June.

Fellow star pupil Claudia, of Egerton Close, Nythe, shrugged off competition from almost 400,000 students to make it into the top five in English.

Joanna said: "I was really nervous about getting the results. I had planned to have them posted to me so I didn't have to go into school and collect them in case I had messed up.

"I am really surprised I did so well in this subject the day before the exam I taken ill. I spent the whole day being sick, which wasn't too good with an exam to revise for."

Joanna, 16, got nine A* grades in total. She is now planning to study A-Levels in philosophy, English Literature, history and physics.

Meanwhile Claudia, who bagged 5A*s and 6As, said she was thrilled.

Although Claudia was born in Swindon, her first language is Polish and she did not start speaking English until she started school, aged four.

"When I called into school this morning to get my results, my teacher Mrs Saunders was looking at me quite sternly," she said.

"She said she wanted to see me straight after I had opened the envelope.

"I'm chuffed with the results. I couldn't believe it I saw the results.

"Inside was a little letter from the examination board telling me that for English I was in the top five. I was quite emotional.

"I would like to thank Mrs Saunders for all her help. She has been brilliant and she is an outstanding teacher."

Proud dad Zbyszek, 56, said: "She has been working very, very hard over the past few months to get these results. She thoroughly deserves them although she doesn't really like all the fuss."