A TEENAGE girl who began secondary school without being able to speak English has her sights set on becoming a top barrister after achieving a staggering 12 GCSE'S.

Lydia khechine left Algeria and her parents, aged 11, to live with her sister in Leytonstone, east London.

The teenager knew only basic phrases like "nice to meet you" and "my name is" just five years ago.

On GCSE results days, on Thursday, at Buxton School in Leytonstone, Lydia and her sister were over the moon to discover she had achieved five A*s, five As and two B grades.

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Lydia will go on to study English, history, philosophy and politics before hoping to gain a place at a Russell Group university.

"It was really challenging at first because sometimes you can be trying to take down what the teacher is saying and you don't really understand what they are saying," she said.

"The whole school system was different.

"I moved with my sister and my parents are at home, but she has always been so supportive.

"At Buxton the teachers were always ready to explain anything I could not understand.

"My teachers had a real impact on me, my RS teacher in particular would stay after school and give me books to read."

Lydia who speaks three languages and was part of the schools debate team, which travelled to Eaton, imperial college and LSCE to compete, said she wants to focus on human rights issues and social justice.

She said: "I am really happy.

"I'm honestly thought they could be lower grades."

Another teenager at Buxton, Dilan Herath, moved to the UK just three years ago from Italy.

His Sri Lankan family arrived in the U.K. in 2014 to seek a better life, now, Dilan has set his sights on university.

In year 9 the teenager, 16, had a support a specialist teacher to translate lessons for him, from Italian to English.

Today, he achieved 10 top GCSE grades from A* - B and is hoping to study at LSE.

"At first I couldn't speak to anyone," he said.

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"For some lessons a teacher came with me with an iPad and helped me understand what was being said. That really helped me.

"After a few months I started to pick it up.

"I am really happy. I can't believe I got these grades."

Wojciech Rozek, 16, took a giant leap towards his dream of becoming a biologist today after opening his brown envelope to find four A*s and five A grades.

The polish student arrived in the U.K. Six years ago with his mother and his sister.

Wojciech, 16, said he plans to make his builder father and cleaner mother proud of him.

At school in Buxton in Leytonstone the teen was able to take part in Saturday school to help him with his language skills.

He said: "At first I couldn't speak a word but later I could understand, I just could not respond to people.

"In year nine that's when I became fluent in English.

"I am happy with the grades. I really want to make my parents proud and help them later on in life.

"The school has really helped me and the teachers, because there are things to help All the students when English isn't their first language."

Head boy Marco-Antonio Thimotheo picked up his results today - to discover phenomenal results.

The 16-year-old achieved an A* in religious studies, seven A grades and four Bs.

Marco, who speaks three languages, including multiple variations of Spanish, moved to the UK aged three, from South America.

He is going on to City in Islington to study biology, chemistry and physics - or photography.

Marco had high praise for the school who encouraged him to join the debating team, which he thrived in, making friends around London and improving his skills set.

He said: "GCSEs were the hardest time in our lives so far. The teachers stayed behind to help us and we could stay until 7pm to study.

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"They wanted to make sure we had the best possible chance of getting high grades.

"If you get things wrong they never make a big deal of it and help you get on the right track."

Fellow student Xiao-Lin He, 16, achieved five A* grades, seven As and one B.

She said: "I am really happy, just to see the hard work has paid off.

"Everyone at Buxton is really well supported."

Theresa McGing, deputy head, praised the children who have smashed through language barriers in one of London's most deprived boroughs to become top performing students.

She said: "I think you would be hard pushed to come across a group of more Hard working, resilient human beings than the pupils here.

"No matter what issues they face, be it housing or language barriers or health issues they come in and they work hard.

"Some of them have not been in the country long and they come in and achieve these kind of results.

"They really are fantastic."

A new grade system is being phased in for GCSEs starting this years.

New exams in English language, English literature and maths were taken by the Year 11 students - Which were graded in numbers, with nine as the highest mark and one the lowest The pupils achieved the excellent results against a backdrop of the biggest shake-up to GCSE exams in a generation.

Results around the country plummeted under the new system.

The number of entries achieving a C or above - or a 4 under the new system - has fallen by 0.6 percentage points since last year to 66.3 per cent – the record lowest since 2008.

Pupils with at least one A grade - or a 7 - has fallen by 0.5 percent to 20 per cent, the lowest since 2007 when the figure was 19.5 per cent.