Pupils receiving their GCSE grades this year should be proud of beating pre-pandemic achievements, despite moderators deciding that overall grades would fall closer to 2019 levels than last year.
Aside from the headline drop in grades in England, here are some other key takeaways from today’s batch of results.
Boys narrow the gap on girls
The gap in the top grades between boys and girls widened during the pandemic (the commonly stated reason for this is that girls tend to do better at coursework). However, this year the gender gap closed to its smallest level since at least 2016, with a difference of 5.8 percentage points.
A quarter (25.3%) of the entries taken by girls were graded 7 or above (equivalent to A and A*), similar to the 25.1% seen before the pandemic. However, 19.5% of boys’ entries received a top grade this year – 0.9 points higher than in 2019.
The gender gap in grades four and above (equivalent to what used to be C grades or higher) is similar to last year’s levels – but also marks a big decline compared with pre-pandemic.
The narrowing gender gap is mainly driven by boys doing better than girls in subjects such as maths, in which 22.1% of boys achieved grades 7-9, compared with 20.2% of girls – the largest gap since 2016. This year was also the first year since 2016 that more boys achieved a grade 4 or above (72.6%) in maths than girls (71.9%).
London widens the gap on the north-east
While the gender grade disparity has narrowed, the geographical one has widened. London usually performs better than other English regions, and this year was no exception. A total of 28.4% of grades in London were seven or above – 10.8 percentage points more than in the north-east (the worst-performing region for top grades). That gap has widened from 10.2 points last year, and 9.3 in 2019. However, all regions are up at least slightly on what they achieved in 2019.
The reason for this widening gap could partly be down to attendance levels – preliminary figures show secondary pupils in London schools had the highest average weekly attendance between September last year and July this year, while those in the north-east, south-west and Yorkshire and the Humber had the highest absence rates.
Creative subjects are out, statistics is in
While the top 10 subjects have not swapped around much compared with last year, others have had a larger than average rise in entries.
Statistics entries were up by 35% compared with 2022, followed by social science subjects (up 16%), business studies (up 14%), Spanish (up 12%), and computing (also up 12%).
At the other end of the table, creative subjects such as performing and expressive arts, music, drama, and art and design have had the biggest drops.
Spanish closing the gap on French
That rise in Spanish is helping keep foreign language entries afloat. The number of students taking Spanish in the GCSE exams is at its highest level since at least 2016. More than 116,000 16-year-olds in England entered for the subject.
The 12% increase marks the biggest year-on-year growth since at least 2016, and means Spanish is closing the gap on French (just over 122,000 entries). On the other hand, German continues its decline, with only about 32,700 exams this year, a decrease of 3.8%.
Entries in other modern languages (which includes Chinese, Polish and Italian) also rose last year, up 2.5% compared with 2022.
Private schools have lost their pandemic advantage
State schools in England, academies, comprehensives, secondary moderns and grammar schools outperformed their pre-pandemic results in top grades and in pass rates, while independent schools and free schools had proportionally fewer top grades than in 2019.
Grammar schools had 59% of their entries achieve grade 7 or above, while 47% of entries from private schools gained the same. Meanwhile 21% of entries from academies got one of the top grades, as did 19% of entries from comprehensives and middle schools.
During the pandemic, independent schools had a disproportionate boost in the proportion of exam entries achieving the top grades, which appears to have been nullified by this year’s results. However, most independent schools take a mixture of GCSE and other equivalent qualifications such as iGCSE that are not included in Ofqual’s data, making comparisons difficult.
