TWO Gwent schoolchildren, aged just 11 and 13, have achieved A* GCSE grades years early.

Eleven-year-old Guy Jones from Chepstow received the highest grade possible in Latin, while Newport’s Sofia Thomas, 13, aced her German exam.

Guy, a St John's-On-The-Hill pupil, was one of the youngest children in the country to receive the grade.

The youngster has been learning Latin since the age of six by his grandfather David Griffiths, 75, and was delighted to have received an A*, claiming he didn't expect to get such a high mark.

Guy, who sat the exam at Rougemont School, said: “Well it is quite an achievement I was very nervous but I did work quite hard and the work paid off.

“My grandad says I am quite natural at it. I’m really happy.”

The 11-year-old now says he is not stopping at just one of ancient language.

“My grandad has also been teaching me Ancient Greek as well as Latin so I want to sit that next year,” Guy said.

Ex-teacher Mr Griffiths said languages have been an important part of his life and he wanted to pass that down to his grandson.

Mr Griffiths said: “He's been taught it [Latin] from a very young age, around five or six-years-old so he has had a lot of practice and he has always been into languages.”

Guy’s mother Janine Griffiths-Baker has also expressed her pride, saying that she was worried about him picking up his results.

She said: “I was looking on the internet last night and I saw you need to get 86 per cent to get an A* pass in the exam.

“It was such a relief when he got the A*, he got A*s in both of the papers he sat. He’s so happy about it and I couldn’t be prouder.”

In Newport, 13-year-old Sofia who attends St Julian's School, opened her envelope on Thursday morning to find the highest grade possible on her results sheet.

The teenager, who also delivers the South Wales Argus as a part-time job, said: "I was really expecting to get something like a C, but when I opened up the letter, I was shocked that I had got such a good grade.

“I become fluent while attending school in Germany when I lived over there in 2013 for 18 months, but prior to that, I had no prior knowledge of the language at all.”

She lived with her family in Hermannsburg in Lower Saxony, and attended the Christian Grammar School (Christian-Gymnasium Hermannsburg), which is a European school in the German state.

Her mother, Yvonne, was born in Germany but decided against teaching her daughter the language as she was learning to read and write when she was younger.

“I wasn’t sure where to introduce it – it is such a difficult language to learn with all the grammatical rules that I didn’t want to confuse her,” she said.

“The school was a strict grammar school and they weren’t sure about admitting a child who had no knowledge of German – but we are incredibly proud of her now that she’s got the A*.”

The family returned to Wales in March 2015 but the 13-year-old has managed to maintain her fluency in the language.

“It took me about six months to become decent, but it wasn’t that long. Since I came back, I still speak to my German friends which has kept my level up,” said Sofia, who hopes to start learning Spanish next.