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.

GCSE Results 2016

GCSE results across England, Wales and Northern Ireland this year have suffered a significant fall. This is in marked contrast to last week's A-Level results, which showed a great deal of stability when compared with recent years. GCSE results peaked in 2011 after a long period of "grade inflation", and have been falling year on year ever since.

Of the five million results being released today, the proportion of entries being given A* to C grades has fallen from 69% to 66.9%, an unprecedented fall of 2.1%. The proportion of top A* and A grades was down overall by 0.9% to 13%. Awards of the very top A* grade have also fallen slightly, down from 6.6% to 6.5%.

One reason for the fall in the overall pass rate is that more pupils in England are re-taking GCSE English and maths, following measures by the government to attempt to ensure that all pupils reach a grade C in these subjects. As a result there were re-sits for tens of thousands who did not reach a C grade last year. Among over 16s, GCSE entries were up by 380,000, up roughly 25% on last year.

By subject, there were falls in the pass (A*-C) rate in maths (down 2.3%), English (down a worrying large 5.2%) and in other subjects.

But even without the re-sit figures, there was a fall in the results of 16 year olds, with the proportion getting A* to C falling by 1.3%. It is thought that a move to an alternative qualification, the iGCSE, for many able students, may account for some of the drop.

While the overall results were downwards, in Northern Ireland the proportion of passes increased slightly to 79.1% and top A* grades rose to 9.3%. In Wales, the level of A* to C passes remained at 66.6%, with A* grades rising slightly to 6.1%.

Girls continue to do better than boys at GCSE. The A*-C rate for girls was 71.3% compared with 62.4% for boys, a gap some would describe as worrying, or even unacceptable. The percentage of entries gaining A* grades for girls was 7.9% and 5.0% for boys.

Next year will start to see the phasing in of a radical change to the way that GCSEs are graded. The new GCSE exams will be graded from 1 to 9 (with 9 the highest), rather than the current A* to G.

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.

GCSE Results Day

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have received their GCSE results today.

The results for more than five million GCSE entries show A* to C grades have risen slightly this year, but slightly fewer top A* and A grades have been awarded. The proportion of A* to C grades rose to 69%, up from 68.8% last year, but A* grades fell by 0.1 percentage points. In line with last week's A-Level results, the national GCSE results are stable compared with last year.

In maths, those achieving A*-C grades increased from 62.4% to 63.3%. There were also improvements in A*-C grades for English, physics, chemistry and biology. But fewer entries for the double science GCSE were awarded good grades.

The best results came in Northern Ireland, as last year, where the proportion achieving A*-C grades rose from 78% to 78.7%. In Wales, there was no change, at 66%.

There have been changes in the age groups of pupils taking GCSEs this year and this is thought to have influenced results. After changes made to the league tables, schools are entering fewer younger pupils (third and fourth year pupils) for GCSEs. In addition, more 17-year-olds are taking GCSEs, because of a government policy that requires pupils to re-sit maths and English if they failed to gain at least a C grade.

As with A-Levels, this year's results come just before a major overhaul to the system. Although the qualification will still be called a GCSE, grades 1 to 9 will be awarded and the content, especially in maths, will become more demanding. The new exams will be phased in over the next 3 or 4 years.

A-level maths now most popular subject

Pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A-level results today and they appear to have fallen slightly this year.

The Joint Council for Qualifications, issuing the results, said there has been a slight fall in A* and A grades and the overall pass rate is down for the first time in over 30 years. The percentage gaining the very highest A* grade has risen from 7.6% to 8.2%. 8.5% of boys' grades were A*, with girls' grades at 7.9%.

A-Level results this year are "broadly stable".

For the third successive year overall A* and A grades have fallen slightly (this year down from 26.3% to 26%), but exam officials are saying A-level results are broadly "stable".

For school leavers planning to go to university, there are suggestions this could be an unusually good year to apply. There are a record number of university places on offer this year - over 500,000 for the first time, which is a rise of over 30,000. Students may still get places even if they have missed their grades. The Ucas admissions service says initial figures show a 2% increase in students getting their first choice place.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan says the government is "lifting the cap on aspiration". Universities Minister Greg Clark says the increase in the number of places is an "important source of social mobility".

There is a trend for more students to take so-called "facilitating subjects" at A-level, such as maths and physics, which can help university applications. Maths is now the most popular subject, overtaking English this year for the first time.

It is the first set of results following the Government's scrapping of January A-Level sittings. However, the fewer opportunities to take modules does not seem to have affected students' overall performance too badly.

Regarding other proposed changes, Labour's shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said he would reverse the government's plan to remove the link between AS and A-levels. This de-coupling of the two exams would limit young people's "opportunity to realise their full potential", said Mr Hunt.

Would you like to share your results story with us? Comment on this article, or email info@mathsbank.co.uk.

GCSEs Set For 2015 Revamp

Glenys Stacey from Ofqual
(Image from TES)

This week Ofqual have released more details about the new curricula for maths and English, when the GCSEs are revamped for first teaching in the year 2015 at the insistence of Education Secretary Michael Gove. Other subjects will be given the same treatment the following year. These will be the biggest changes to GCSE since their inception in the late 1980s. Pupils now in their second year will be the first to take the new GCSE.

Glenys Stacey from Ofqual pointed out that the most important changes in the new GCSE will be the new content in each subject. In addition to this:

- There will be only one exam, which will take place at the end of the two years of study;
- Grades will be awarded from 1 to 9 (with 9 the highest). With one more grade available than in the current system, this allows for more differentiation at the top end.
- There will be less coursework in most subjects (and probably none in maths);
- There will be a complete end to modular GCSEs.

Stacey says that the new GCSE will allow pupils to gain a real confidence and competence in each subject. She also expressed confidence that these would be the last big changes to the GCSE for a significant number of years, giving more certainty and stability to the exam system for both schools and pupils.

In the maths GCSE, pupils will be expected to memorise many more formulae, such as the quadratic formula, the sine and cosine rules. Until now, these have been provided on the formula sheet.

These changes only apply to the set of GCSEs offered by the English exam boards. The exam boards in Wales and Northern Ireland are not obliged to follow suit. If the GCSE in these parts of the UK remain as they stand, the divergence from England will become significant, with the qualifications having little in common but the name.

Are you a teacher or a pupil? What do you think of the proposed changes to the maths GCSE? Let us know by email or comment on this post.

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.

GCSE Results Fall for the First Time

Over a million students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their GCSE results today and for the first time ever, overall results have fallen.

Since replacing the old O-Level and CSE exams in 1988, the percentage of GCSE papers awarded an A*-C grade has been rising inexorably, year on year.

Today's GCSE results show that 69.4% of entries earned grades A*-C, compared with 69.8% last year.

The proportion of pupils receiving the top grades (A and A*) has also fallen for the first time, down from 23.2% to 22.4%.

As with the A-Level exams, England's exams regulator, Ofqual, has told exam boards they would have to justify the overall pass rate if it were significantly different from previous years. This has happened in an attempt to address concerns of "dumbing down" and to ensure results were comparable,

However, this system, known as "comparable outcomes", has created a furore in itself. There have been accusations that the exam boards had been asked by the Department for Education to fix the results.

Teaching unions are not particularly happy about any drop in apparent standards. They claim that any rise in grades is the result of better teaching and better-prepared students.

In most subjects, including maths, there was a fall in the overall proportion of A*-C grades, but the fall was particularly marked in English. Many teachers claim that students have been marked down by an entire grade in English compared with the results that teachers had predicted.

Countering this, the Joint Council for Qualifications, which publishes the annual results, said that the fall in A*-C English results was partly down to more candidates sitting the exam during the winter exam season.

This set of results is set against the backdrop of considerable changes being planned for GCSEs. As of September, the GCSE exams set by the English exam boards will no longer be modular. Instead, students will sit a single final exam. In addition, GCSE exams in English literature, geography, history and religious education will be assessed for spelling, punctuation and grammar. These new strictures will affect those sitting their GCSEs in the summer of 2014.

Schools in Wales and Northern Ireland will continue to be able to opt for modular GCSEs.

Eventually, Michael Gove has expressed an interest in returning to an exam more similar to the old O-Level. Some in education are even questioning whether it is necessary to take formal exams at all at the age of 16.

GCSE results. Well done girls. Well done boys in maths.

GCSE results are out today, with the results showing maths as one of the few remaining areas in which boys are outperforming girls.

About 26% of papers taken by girls were given an A or A*, while just under 20% of those taken by boys were. Overall, those awarded between an A* and a C grade  has risen for the 23rd year in a row, up 0.8% to 69.8%. But the overall pass rate (grades A* to E) dropped slightly to 92.7%.

Mathematics is compulsory at GCSE. As with A-Levels, more pupils are taking individual sciences, and fewer are taking modern languages, geography and history, although RE numbers are up.

The gap between girls and boys is now at its widest ever. 26.5% of grades awarded to girls were A or A*, with only 19.8% of boys. The gap has also widened when considering A*-C grades. Maths is one subject that bucks this trend: boys have beaten girls at GCSE maths for the third year in a row. It is widely believed that the decision to drop coursework in GCSE maths has given boys better chances. The proportion of boys getting grades A* to C in maths has risen again this year from 57.6% to 58.6%. The proportion of girls passing has also risen, from 56.8% to 58.3%.

Northern Ireland again gained the best results with 75% of papers being awarded A*-C grades.

The government has introduced the English Baccalaureate to demonstrate whether a pupil has gained a good grade in 5 key subject areas. But the fall in the uptake of the humanities, which are one of the 5 key areas, will not be welcome news for ministers.

Critics say that the inexorable rise in GCSE grades is a sign of increasingly easy examinations. The NCETM have welcomed the rise in maths grades, saying that the improvement is a result of better teaching methods.