Schools and colleges in England are expecting a flood of “demotivated” young people forced to retake their GCSE English and maths exams next year, as nearly 40,000 more students are thought likely to fail to get the minimum grade in at least one of the two key subjects.
Students who have not gained at least a grade 4 (equivalent to a lower grade C) in English or maths have to resit the subjects until they are 18 and remain in full-time education. The numbers are likely to rise this year as GCSE grading returns to tougher, pre-pandemic levels.
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those whose education was most disrupted by the Covid pandemic are expected to be most affected, with school leaders and teaching unions calling on the government to revise the requirement.
Last year’s GCSE results in England saw the widest gap in results for a decade between disadvantaged pupils and their better-off peers, a trend that is expected to continue this year.
Headteachers have said many pupils this year have struggled with high anxiety in the aftermath of Covid, as well as the effects of the cost of living crisis.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “Forcing resits is demotivating for many students and the low pass rate is a clear sign of policy failure. Educators know the weaknesses of the current system and have suggested many alternatives, from functional skills tests to modular assessments. The government should rethink this outdated policy.”
Fewer students were required to resit English and maths courses in recent years, as GCSE grades were awarded by assessment in 2020 and 2021 and more generous grading was applied last year.
In 2022, 75% of pupils taking GCSE maths gained a grade 4 or above, while 77% gained a grade 4 or better in English. Applying 2019 grade proportions would mean both pass rates would drop by several percentage points, so about 37,000 fewer pupils would pass English and 25,000 fewer would pass maths than in 2022.
In 2022 only one in five of those retaking their maths GCSEs passed.
Prof Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University’s centre for education and employment research, said: “It must be soul-destroying to continually have to retake exams that you have failed in, perhaps several times, and to be denied entry to apprenticeships and much else if you cannot pass them. Surely, there is an urgent need for a policy rethink.”
Smithers has forecast that about 100,000 pupils in England will receive fewer top grades this year than in 2022, which will have significant consequences for those applying for further education or sixth form courses.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said it was “possible” that some sixth forms and colleges would lower the GCSE grades required for entry compared with last year.
“I think entry-level requirements compared to the last two years might be flexed to accommodate people who have got lower grades than they would have got in the last two years,” he said.
“But what no one wants to do is to raise false hopes by saying: ‘Oh, you’ve got 3s and 4s in your GCSEs. I’m sure last year they would have been 4s and 5s, so let’s put you on an A-level course.’
“Because the bottom line is if you do that, you risk a young person being overstretched and very unhappy.”
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary for England, said: “Grading is returning to normal, which means a pupil who would have achieved a grade 4 before the pandemic is just as likely to achieve that this year.”
