The proportion of top grades in GCSE results for 16-year-olds in England has fallen since last year, with the overall pass rate also down, after pupils whose education has seen interrupted by the pandemic to sit the first exams in three years.
Top grades of 7 and above, equivalent to A and A*, fell by three percentage points this summer, in line with government plans to tackle grade inflation over the past two years and gradually reduce results to levels before the pandemic.
The proportion of pupils achieving grade 4 or above (4 is a pass) also fell by four percentage points, from 79% last year to 75%, meaning thousands more pupils could face now the English and math practices.
Girls continued to outperform boys (almost one in three girls’ entries in England scored a grade 7 or above (30.7%)), although the gender gap in the top grades narrowed by 1 .6 percentage points compared to last year.
Meanwhile, figures released by England’s exam regulator Ofqual showed that 2,193 16-year-olds in England achieved Grade 9 in all their subjects, including 13 students who completed 12 GCSEs.
graph of regional differences
The drop in higher grades (7s, 8s and 9s) is not as sharp as in last week’s A-level results, which saw higher grade inflation during the pandemic. At A-level, results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland revealed top grades were down 8.4 percentage points on last year’s record results, while only A*s fell by 4 .5 points.
As with A-levels, the drop in GCSEs was expected, after Ofqual announced that grades this summer would be halved between 2019 and 2021, with a full return to pre-pandemic grades l next summer
Chief Regulator Jo Saxton said: “Students collecting their GCSE results today can be very proud of their achievements, a testament to their hard work and resilience over the past two years.
“As with A-level results, today’s GCSE results are overall higher than in 2019 and, as we have always said, lower than in 2021 when a different assessment method was in place. It makes sense to compare this year’s results with those of 2019, when the exams were last held.”
This year, 27% of GCSE grades in England were aged 7 or over
The results come after two years of unprecedented disruption to schools due to the Covid pandemic, when schools closed, learning moved online and exams were canceled and replaced by the evaluation of teachers. Even after schools reopened, disruption continued with large groups of children sent home after contact with the virus and high levels of teacher absences.
This summer’s exams therefore included a number of adaptations aimed at taking account of learning lost due to the pandemic, including less content or fewer topics in some GCSEs and lower grade limits.
Passes in maths and English are essential for students who want to progress. In maths, 24.9% of grades were below 4, up from 22.1% last year, although still lower than 2019, when it was 28.5%. Likewise, in English, 22.2% of grades were 3 or less, two percentage points more than the last two years.
England’s GCSE failure rate almost four points higher than in 2021 – chart
In Wales, nearly 70% of results were grade C or above. Around 69.7% of entries for 16-year-olds got at least a C, compared with 63.8% in 2019, the last time formal exams were held in Wales.
Jeremy Miles, Education Secretary for Wales, said: “We welcome these results as we return to exams this year – it’s great to see what our students have achieved.
“Don’t be too disappointed and don’t be too hard on yourself if things didn’t go as planned today. There are a number of options available, whether you don’t know what to do next, or if you didn’t show up for your exams.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The fact that grades are generally lower this year compared to last year has nothing to do with the performance of pupils, but rather reflects the government and Ofqual’s decision to return qualification standards to the 2019 standard in two stages, with this year representing a mid-point between 2019 and 2021.
“The government and Ofqual will now have to decide whether to put mitigations in place for next year. The strong indication we are hearing from school and college leaders is that this needs to happen because next year’s cohort will also have seen a lot affected by Covid”.
The most popular subject in terms of entries was the science double award, with a total of 904,012 entries in the UK, up 0.9% on 2021, with maths remaining the second most popular. Business studies saw the largest percentage increase in entries of any major subject, at 4.6%.
Although pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland take GCSEs, the devolution of education to each country’s governments has seen course content, grades and assessment methods diverge substantially, which which makes any UK-wide comparison difficult.
The traditional A*-G grades are used in Northern Ireland and Wales, while in England they have been replaced by a 9-1 system, where 9 is the highest grade. In Scotland, where pupils received their exam results on 9 August, the National Level 5 pass rate fell to 80.8%, down from 85.8% in 2021.
Around 7,000 students in England may not receive their BTec Level 2 results as planned on Thursday. Exam board Pearson said it was trying to provide the missing results as soon as possible. It comes after Pearson apologized last Thursday for BTec level 3 students not receiving their grades as planned on the day A and T level exam results were released, casting doubt on university places
Kath Thomas, acting chief executive of the Joint Council for Qualifications, said: “As planned, and as with last week’s A-level results, these results are higher than the last set of exams summer 2019, but lower than last year’s teacher. -Assessed grades. This reflects the special arrangements put in place to support students, schools and universities through another challenging year due to Covid.”