A-levels result day: Rise in top grades across South East

As thousands of students get their A-level results today the overall picture is still above pre-pandemic levels.

Hundreds of thousands of students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their A-level results today, with national figures showing the proportion of top grades is up on last year.

The proportion of A-level entries awarded top grades also remains above pre-pandemic levels.

The South East of had England’s second-highest proportion of entries awarded A or above, at 30.8%.

In 2023 it was slightly lower at 30.3%

In 2019 it was 28.3%.

The students receiving their results today were in Year 9 when schools shut due to Covid-19, and they were the first year group to sit GCSE exams after they were cancelled for two years in a row.

The A-level results stats in detail

More than a quarter (27.8%) of UK entries were awarded an A or A* grade, up by 0.6 percentage points on last year when 27.2% achieved the top grades.

This was also higher than in 2019 – the last year that summer exams were taken before the pandemic – when 25.4% of entries were awarded A or A* grades.

Overall, the proportion of UK entries awarded the top A* grade this year has risen by 0.4 percentage points to 9.3%, compared with 8.9% in 2023, and it is higher than when it stood at 7.7% in 2019.

Excluding 2020-2022, the years of the pandemic, this is the highest proportion of A* grades awarded since they were first handed out in 2010.

But the overall pass rate – the proportion of entries graded A* to E – has fallen to 97.2% this year, which is lower than last year (97.3%) and the pre-pandemic year of 2019 (97.6%).

The figures, published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), cover A-level entries from students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Results were expected to return to pre-pandemic levels

In England, exams regulator Ofqual had said it expected this year’s A-level results to be “broadly similar” to last year, when grades were restored to pre-pandemic levels.

In Wales and Northern Ireland, exam regulators said they aimed to return to pre-pandemic grading this summer – a year later than in England.

It comes after the Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in top grades in 2020 and 2021, with results based on teacher assessments instead of exams.

More students accepted onto degree courses

The number of applicants accepted on to UK degree courses has risen this year, Ucas figures show.

Overall, 243,650 18-year-old applicants from the UK have been accepted at a university or college, compared to 230,600 last year – a rise of 6%.

Gender gap narrows overall

In A-levels, boys have pulled further ahead of girls at the top grade this year, with 9.5% of boys’ entries scoring an A* compared with 9.1% of girls’ entries – a gap of 0.4 percentage points. Last year the gap was 0.3 percentage points.

Boys have traditionally led girls, scoring more A* grades than their female classmates every year between 2012 and 2019. But girls overtook boys between 2020 and 2022 – the years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Girls continued to outperform boys at A* and A but the gender gap has narrowed again this year.

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