THE highest number of scholarships ever has been handed out to high-achieving students from across East Lancashire by St Mary’s College.

The Blackburn-based post-16 college has awarded 45 young people excellence scholarships, the highest number since they were introduced four years ago.

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They were brought in in a bid to give students the opportunity to benefit financially from the ‘aspirational fund’, the Shear Brow college has said.

Each ‘exceptional’ student has been awarded a scholarship of up to £1,000 based on their GCSE results.

Of those given the scholarships, 25 are from Blackburn and the group achieved a total of 107 A* GCSE grades and 86 A grades.

The money is intended to be used for educational purposes and previous students have used theirs to fund a physics visit to Cern in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Cambridge Law Conference.

The scholarships are guaranteed to each student who scores 63 points or more with an A* grade carrying a value of 10 points, eight points for an A and six points for a B.

They are based on seven subjects and must including English language, maths, two science GCSEs and any three other subjects.

The college also offers a Bursary Fund designed to help support young people who face the ‘greatest barriers’ to continuing in education or training post-16.

The college announced the that general entry requirements for 2016 is a minimum of three GCSEs at grade B and two GCSEs at grade C.