A-Level Results Day 2016

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their A-level and AS results today. The A-level results show a stable pattern compared with last year.

Maths remains the nation's most popular choice of subject, as it was last year, and increasing numbers are also opting to take Further Maths at A-Level.

The proportion of top grades (A and A*) is 25.8%, down by 0.1% on last year. The overall pass (grades A*-C) rate of 98.1% remained the same. Northern Ireland remains the region with the biggest proportion of top grades, 29.5%.

Girls fared better than boys, once again, with 79.7% of girls getting a pass grade, compared with 75% for boys. Boys are getting more A* grades (8.5% compared with 7.7% for girls), although this gap between the very top-performing girls and boys has narrowed for the first time in five years. The overall level of A* grades (8.1%) has been falling now for 2 years.

According to Ucas, the universities' admissions service, 424,000 university places have been offered to hopeful students, which is up by 3% on the same time last year. But many places are reportedly still available through clearing, including at leading universities and for highly sought-after courses, such as medicine.

The increase in the number of places still available is mainly due to two factors: a roughly 2% fall in the number of school-leavers and the removal of the cap on the number of places universities in England can offer.

AS levels are being "decoupled" from being part of A-levels - and this year's figures show a 13.7% drop in entries for the AS course. Previously the AS has carried with it the option of continuing on to a full A-Level, but this will now cease to be the case: if you register for an AS, this is the qualification you will get.

Teachers and head teachers' leaders have warned that, although the overall results appear to show stability when compared with recent years, individual schools and pupils are facing some unpredictable outcomes.

The current cap of £9000 for university tuition fees is being removed, so students starting at England's universities in the autumn could face higher fees. Exeter University has been the first to announce that it will increase fees to £9,250 for all current and new students.

With the prospect of increasing fees, school leavers may opt not to go to university at all. Financial services firm PwC says that it has had a 20% increase over two years for new recruits of those leaving school with A-levels.

Changes to A-Level Maths and Further Maths Delayed

Maths exams will become more "rigorous".

The UK Government is planning to delay the changes to A-Level mathematics and further mathematics that were to be introduced with first teaching in September 2016. The delay of one year comes amid concerns that pupils will not be sufficiently prepared for the new exam.

Following advice from the exams regulator Ofqual, teaching will now start in 2017, with the first exams for the new A-Level taking place in June 2019. Ofqual said the delay would mean that students on the new courses would have taken the new maths GCSE being introduced in 2015, and would therefore be better prepared for the new A-Level. It will also allow more time for schools to prepare for teaching the new AS- and A-Levels.

At the same time as changes in the content, the structure of A-levels is being overhauled and many schools are struggling with these planned changes. From September 2015 AS-Levels are being separated from A-Levels, which will become two-year courses, with grades decided solely by a final exam.

The changes, devised by the previous education secretary Michael Gove, are one part of a drive to make the exam system more rigorous. However, some universities have said they want schools to continue with AS-levels. Cambridge University has said that AS-Levels are vital to the university selection process and has written to schools asking them to continue with AS-levels.

Teaching unions, including the National Association of Head Teachers, have welcomed the delay, citing the extra time for schools to prepare as a key factor.

The Labour Party have said that if they come to power, they will reverse the decision to decouple the AS from the A-Level. However, the practicalities of this are fraught with difficulty, with the newly decoupled AS-Level due to be taught only 4 months after May's general election.

A-Level Results Show Slight Fall in Top Grades

More than 300,000 A-Level students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have found out their A-level and AS results today, and join the scramble for university places.

The results, published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), show that there has been a fall in the proportion of A-levels awarded top grades for the second year in a row, after three decades of steady increases. 26.3% of all entries were given A or A* grades this year, a slight fall from 26.6% in 2012. Previously, the proportion getting top grades had risen each year since 1980.

The national pass rate rose marginally to 98.1%. This has also risen for about 30 years.

Continuing recent trends, more students are taking A-levels in maths and science and there is a continued fall in those taking languages. Maths rose by just under 3% and further maths by 4.5%.

Girls are still ahead of boys when looking at the top grades, A or A* (26.7% for girls compared with 25.9% for boys), but boys this year were more likely to get the A* grade (7.9% of boys' entries, compared with 7.4% for girls).

The university admissions body Ucas has said that 385,910 students have already been accepted by UK universities, 31,600 more than at the same point last year.

The UK government claims its reforms to make it easier for universities to take on the students that they want to recruit have sped up the process of accepting students. Under these changes, universities in England are being allowed to admit as many top-performing students (gaining ABB or more) as they want to. For students with lower results, universities are allocated a quota of undergraduates they can recruit. Last year, thousands of course places were left unfilled.

The change was introduced to allow the most popular universities to expand. It came in alongside higher tuition fees, which rose to a maximum of £9,000 a year from autumn 2012.

Students in Northern Ireland continue to perform best. 83.5% of entries here scored between an A* and a C and 30.7% were awarded the top grades of A or A*. In Wales, these figures are 75.2% and 22.9% respectively and in England 77% and 26.3%.

From 2015 the government plans to introduced major changes to A-levels. The AS-level will no longer count towards the final A-level grade and, with modules being phased out, all exams will be taken at the end of the two year course.

Congratulations to all those who gained the grades they were looking for today - and best of luck to everybody looking for a university place.