GCSE Results 2017

GCSE results are out today, with a fragmented set of exams now being sat across the UK. In England, new GCSE courses have been designed to be more challenging. Overall across the UK, the pass rate has dropped across the full range of subjects, from 66.9% to 66.3% of entries. A pass under the old system was a C grade; under the new system of grades from 1 to 9 (with 9 the best), a 4 is considered a standard pass.

In England the pass rate for maths, one of the new tougher exams, it dropped slightly from 71.4% to 70.7%. The proportion of entries receiving the top grades (A/7 or above) has also fallen, to 20%, down 0.5 percentage points on last year, the lowest since 2007.

However, exam boards appear to have worked the grade boundaries to ensure the distribution of grades is broadly consistent with last year's. For example, on the higher tier maths paper, a grade 4 pass would have been achieved with just 18% of the overall marks. For a grade 9, 79% mark was required. For a grade 7, the equivalent of an A, candidates needed just over half marks.

Students and teachers have complained about a lack of textbooks and practice papers in the run-up to the summer exams.

In Northern Ireland and Wales, exams are still graded A* to G. In Northern Ireland, female students continue to outperform their male counterparts at this level, with an 8.1% difference in the pass rate (A*-C). One in ten entries are now awarded the top A* grade here.

A-Level Results 2015

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland received their A-level results on Thursday.

The proportion of A-level entries being awarded top A* and A grades has fallen slightly this year to 25.9% of entries, down from 26% last year.

In a year of "stable" results, overall passes (A*-C grades) rose marginally by 0.1 percentage point to 98.1%. The proportion getting the very top A* grade remained the same at 8.2%, with A grades down by 0.1%.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said the results showed the impact of the government's drive for "core academic subjects" with a 20% increase in maths entries since 2010. Traditional subjects such as geography and history have also seen strong growth in numbers, but computer science has seen the biggest increase.

With caps on the number of students at each university being removed, record numbers have been accepted on university courses. The Ucas university admissions service said that 409,000 places had already been confirmed, up 3% on last year.

Michael Turner, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, pointed out "The over-riding message from this year's figures is one of stability. There have been no significant changes to the system."

"As a result thousands more pupils, from all backgrounds, are studying subjects that will secure them a place at a top university or an apprenticeship and that will help to secure well paid employment," said Mr Gibb.

Chris Keates, leader of the NASUWT teaching union, said that the results showed that the "gold standard" A-level system had been maintained, despite the pressure on schools to prepare for forthcoming changes to exams.

But this year's lifting of the cap on university places in England has seen more students than ever accepted on to courses.

Northern Ireland A-Level students achieved slightly fewer A and A* grades compared with last year, but still outperform England and Wales. The Joint Council for Qualifications said that 29.3% of Northern Irish entries achieved A or A* grades, a drop from 29.9% last year. Mathematics is also becoming a very popular subject for A-Level students in the province, with a 10.6% rise in the number of girls taking maths at A-Level in Northern Ireland.

But maths saw a fall in the number of students being awarded the top A* and A grades as did the science subjects and English.

This year's relatively stable results come before a period of major transition for the "gold standard" A-Level. First teaching for the new A-Levels in some subjects begins this year. For other subjects it will be 2016, and for Maths and Further Maths the new syllabus will be taught in September 2017 for the first time.

GCSE Results Day: Maths Results Rise

GCSE students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been receiving their results today. The results show that 68.8% of entries scored A*-C, up from 68.1% last summer, although there was a marked fall in English GCSE grades.

Students sitting their GCSE Maths exam.
Photo: Wikipedia.

There have been warnings of volatility in this set of results following an overhaul of the exam system. The most significant impact on this year's results has been the big fall in students taking their GCSEs a year early. Schools have been discouraged from such multiple entries following changes in the way school league tables are compiled.

Fewer fourth years taking maths GCSE meant there was a sharp improvement in maths results: the percentage achieving A* to C grades rose by 4.8 percentage points to 62.4%.

The overall pass rate was 98.5%, down 0.3 percentage points. 6.7% of entries were awarded an A* grade.

Girls are still doing better than boys at GCSE, with 73.1% of girls' entries achieving A* to C compared with 64.3% for boys.

In England, but not in Wales or Northern Ireland, this is the first year of results following moves towards exams at the end of two years, rather than including coursework and modular units. The results for GCSE English seem to have been most affected by this change, with the number of A*-C grades down 1.9% to 61.7%.

In Wales and Northern Ireland, these changes were not introduced and the three regional sets of GCSE exams are now beginning to diverge in various ways, including the subjects being taken by students.

While the government are defending the changes being made, Chris Keates of the NASUWT teaching union said this year's students had to "cope with a raft of rushed through and ill-conceived changes to the qualifications system and so today's results are especially commendable".

The National Union of Teachers' leader Christine Blower said that the headline figures "mask underlying issues which will only become clear over time".

Have you had your GCSE results today, or are you teaching GCSEs? How did your school fare following changes to the structure of GCSEs this year? Let us know at info@mathsbank.co.uk .

GCSE Results Fall Again

"Methody" Methodist College Belfast. Once again, Northern Ireland pupils obtained better results than their counterparts in England and Wales. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The GCSE results for 600,000 teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, released today by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), show a small, but significant drop in the number of A*-C passes.

Grades have fallen for the second year in a row with 68.1% of exam entries being graded between an A* and a C - a fall of about 1.3% on last year. In maths, the fall was 0.8 percentage points from 58.8% to 58%.

The overall proportion getting the top grades A* or A fell from 22.4% to 21.3%. And the overall pass rate also fell marginally, for the first time since the GCSE exam was introduced 25 years ago.

One factor that may have contributed to the drop in grades is the increasing trend for schools to enter pupils for certain GCSEs - particularly maths and English - one or even two years early. The JCQ have criticised this approach, claiming that pupils are missing out on the chance to gain better grades - and on the extra years of learning.

In addition, there is a trend for pupils to be entered for more than one exam in the same subject, whether it be for different boards or different tiers. There has also been a marked increase in the number of pupils taking the IGCSE, as well as the traditional GCSE. In these ways pupils can take the best result, but the overall statistics are skewed downwards.

Critics say that these trends are a result of schools chasing places in league tables, including the new English Baccalaureate, which rates schools on the number of pupils getting good GCSEs in a range of core subjects.

There was a big fall in pupils getting top grades in the science subjects, following the introduction of new syllabuses and exams.

Brian Lightman, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that schools, students and teachers are working hard in a constantly changing and turbulent environment. He also pointed out that piecemeal changes to the exam system make it impossible to compare grades from one year to the next.

Last year the grading of the English GCSE resulted in a legal challenge by some schools, when the grading standards were deemed to have changed between the January and June exams.

Only in Northern Ireland was there a rise in grades. A total of 28% of entries were graded A or A*, compared with 21.2% in England.

With the modular system soon to be scrapped in England, Northern Ireland still has to decide whether or not to continue with modules, or follow England's lead with a single end-of-course exam. Wales has already decided to continue with a modular system for GCSEs.

Turing Competition

There has been a lot of interest in code-breaking recently - cryptography to use the posh word. You may remember the secret message attached to a pigeon's leg, found mysteriously in somebody's chimney, a message that still baffles cryptographers 70 years after it was written.

Alan Turing was one of the finest British code-breakers during World War II. Some of his work, along with the work of others at Bletchley Park, is supposed to have shortened the war by perhaps 2 years.

After the war, Turing went to Manchester University, where he helped to develop one of the country's first computers. To celebrate his life and work, Manchester University are running a code-breaking competition to begin in the New Year.

The competition is open to secondary school pupils up to Year 11 (England and Wales), S4 (Scotland) or Year 12 (Northern Ireland). It runs from January to April 2013 and is based on a story that runs in six episodes. In each episode there is a new code-breaking challenge to solve.

To enter the competition, you will need a team of pupils. The website features a discussion forum and a leaderboard. Prizes are Amazon vouchers, with members of the winning team receiving £30 of vouchers each and a trophy for the school.

If you think you're up to the Turing Challenge, have a go and good luck!

Key Stage 2 Worksheets and Transfer Test Practice Papers

Our sister site Orchard Education Solutions has recently launched a series of Key Stage 2 learning materials.

There are worksheets for a wide selection of maths topics, e.g. decimals and fractions, area and perimeter and working with charts.

Also included are worksheets on English topics, such as apostrophes, poetry and comprehension.

You will find all of these worksheets at http://orchardsolutions.com/downloads/ks2-worksheets . Most of them are 99p to download.

There are also sixteen practice papers for the Northern Ireland Transfer Test, available at http://orchardsolutions.com/downloads/transfer-test . These are available as downloads or as hard copies to be sent out to you. You can also buy bundles of four papers in either format.

You will need to register on the site to access any of these materials.

The GCSE is Dead - Long Live the EBacc

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary in England, has a well-known dislike for the GCSE. Yesterday, he announced plans for its abolition.

Michael Gove, Education Secretary in England
announced plans for the English Baccalaureate yesterday.

If the name English Baccalaureate rings a bell, it's because it already exists. The EBacc is currently a system used to measure the performance of schools, using the results of pupils in key subjects. Now the EBacc is to become a formal qualification.

The EBacc will be introduced for core subjects (Maths, English and Science) from 2015, with a staged introduction for other subjects. It will be based on a final exam at the end of two years' study. There will be fewer resits, no modules and no controlled assessments. All marking will be external.

There will be one exam board per EBacc subject. Exam boards will bid for the right to run an EBacc in a particular subject for a five year term.

The Liberal Democrats appear to have had a minor success by persuading the Education Secretary to drop his plans for a two-tier system, which would have been a throwback to the days of O-Levels and CSEs.

The Welsh and Northern Irish devolved governments now have a big decision to make. They may decide to follow the English lead and create new Baccalaureate exams of their own. Alternatively, they could stick with GCSEs. This approach would risk giving pupils a qualification that has been deemed to be lacking in rigour in England. One head teacher in Northern Ireland I have spoken to has already said they would consider using qualifications offered by English exam boards.

A-Level Results Day. Top Grades Down.

It's that time of year again. A-Level results came out this morning, with many students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland able to find out their grades online from 7 a.m.

The headline from today's set of results is that the percentage of students being awarded the top grades (A and A*) is down, for the first time in 20 years. Today, 26.6% of A-level entries achieved the top two grades, compared with 27% last year. The overall pass rate, meanwhile, continues to rise, for a 30th consecutive year.

The drop in the percentage of top grades was particularly pronounced in Northern Ireland, although overall the performance there is still better than average, with 31.9% of entrants being awarded top grades, down from last year's figure of 34.5%, according to figures from the Northern Irish exam board CCEA.

Since 2010, the exam watchdog Ofqual has been telling exam boards they must be able to account for any upward movement in grades, to show that it was a result of a real improvement in performance.

Girls continue to gain slightly better grades than boys, but this year boys obtained more A* grades, with 8% of entries gaining the top grade, compared with 7.9% for girls.

Once again, maths and science subjects proved popular, with increases in the number of entrants, while the trend for modern languages is still downwards.

For many of the 330,000 students getting their results today, A-Level results will determine whether they can go to their chosen university.

The number of applications for university places is about 7% down this year, following the rise in tuition fees to a maximum of £9000 in England. Students in other parts of the UK may not have to pay so much. Northern Irish students staying in Northern Ireland will face no rise in fees. The Welsh government has agreed to subsidise students facing higher fees in other parts of the UK. Scottish students, who do not sit A-Levels, pay no fees at all if they choose to attend Scottish universities.