Summary
A-level results in England showed biggest drop on record A-level grades awarded in England have shown their biggest drop after results plummeted across the board, in line with the government’s policy of enforcing a return to pre-pandemic grading.Private and grammar schools had the largest drop in top grades compared with last year – however it has not made up for the disproportionate boost in grades those types of schools had during the pandemic.
Exam chiefs confirmed there were 67,000 fewer A/A* grades this year, compared with 2022, but 26,000 more than in 2019. Jo Saxton, the chief regulator of the exams regulator Ofqual, defended this year’s results and the decision to bring them back roughly to 2019 levels, but expressed sympathy for students who have suffered during the pandemic.
Social mobility charity warned of “growing disparity” between the most and least well-off. The gap between private and state schools in England closed but private pupils are still far ahead.
Results show sharp regional disparities. While London and south-east England recorded a greater proportion of top grades compared with 2019, there was a fall in the north-east England, and Yorkshire and Humber regions. There was an 8 percentage point gap between students getting A*-A grades in south-east England and those in the north-east, wider than the 5 percentage point gap in 2019.
Mathematics remained the most popular subject for this year’s students, while economics replaced geography in the Top 10 most popular subjects, with more than 39,000 students taking the subject. English literature went up in popularity, after two years of declining entries, while computing recorded the highest increase with 16% more entries this year.
We are closing this A-level liveblog now, thanks for joining in and congratulations to everyone who got their A-level and T-level results today. And if you didn’t quite get what you want, good luck for the next few days and months ahead – and remember Jeremy Clarkson only got a C and 2Us … and he’s got his own brewery.
Source: The Guardian