A-level results 2024: Top A-level grades rise as four in five students secure first university choice

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

Top A-level results across England, Wales and Northern Ireland have risen for the first time since 2021 – with 27.8% of all grades marked at A* or A.

That’s up from 27.2% last year.

When looking at individual nations’ results, the percentage of top grades increased in England, but fell in Wales and Northern Ireland.

There has been an effort to bring top grades back down in line with pre-pandemic levels over recent years, ever since sharp rises in 2020 and 2021 when exams were cancelled and results were based on teachers’ assessments.

In England, the exams regulator aimed for that return to 2019 levels to happen last year (although they remained slightly higher).

But in Wales and Northern Ireland, it was always the plan that this year would be the moment grades fell back in line with pre-Covid levels.

Across all three nations, the percentage of top grades this year remains higher than in 2019, when it was 25.4%.