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A-level results show first rise in top grades in six years
A-level results show first rise in top grades in years despite tougher exams
(about 5 hours later)
The proportion of top marks awarded at A-level has risen overall for the first time in six years and boys did better than girls at gaining A and A* grades.
British sixth formers achieved some of the best A-level results seen for several years, despite the introduction of new, tougher exams in England that depressed grades in several popular subjects including sciences.
The published national results of 2017’s exams show that in the bulk of subjects the proportion of A and A* grades awarded went up to 26.3%, a rise of half a percentage point compared with 2016.
Driven partly by improved performances among boys nationally, the proportion of students awarded the top A* and A grades rose for the first time since 2011. Overall, the share of papers gaining A or higher passed 26%, up by half a percentage point since 2016.
But students taking the new group of tougher reformed exam subjects such as English, history and sciences saw their chances of top grades recede.
But the improvement was tempered by a more downbeat performance in the 13 subjects – such as English, science and history – taken by pupils in England that have been overhauled in changes that date back to Michael Gove’s reign as education secretary.
Experts from the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) – which represents the exam boards – said it was “not possible to draw accurate conclusions at this stage” for the different directions of the two groups of A-levels, but said the results could be influenced by a weaker track record among this year’s students taking individual subjects.
The national figures showed boys outperforming girls in the share of top grades for the first time since the last major A-level reform in 2002. This year, 26.6% of exam entries for boys across the UK gained A and A*s, compared with 26.1% for girls. Last year, 25.7% of boys were awarded A and A*s – 0.3 points below girls.
In the reformed subjects tested in England for the first time this summer, sixth formers had fewer top grades, with A and A*s down by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2016.
In England, boys also coped better with the introduction of the new A-levels when it came to the top grades. In those subjects, the results for girls declined significantly compared with previous years.
The two sets of exams showed wide variation in the relative performance of boys and girls. Overall, for the first time in at least seven years, boys outperformed girls in achieving A-A* grades, gaining 26.6% A and A*, compared with 26.1% for girls. Last year 25.7% of boys were awarded A and A*s – 0.3 points below girls.
Uncertainty over their prospective results appeared to have caused some students to hold off committing to a chosen university. Ucas, the course applications clearing house, reported a slower than normal start to the annual acceptance process.
However, in the reformed subjects girls did better, with 7.3% awarded the highest A* grade compared with 7% of boys, while the A and A* grades combined were the same for both at 24.3%.
The changes in England – which led to claims that this year’s A-levels would be among the toughest ever – stripped out modular AS-levels that had been examined after the first year of the course. The new A-levels had less coursework and instead relied on final exam marks.
Overall the pass rate in the A*-E grades fell 0.2 points to 97.9%, with a larger fall among the reformed subjects of 0.5 percentage points.
In several subjects, the new content was regarded by teachers as tougher, with subjects such as chemistry and physics including much heavier emphasis on maths.
In Wales there was a much improved set of results after last year’s disappointing efforts. While just 22.7% of candidates received A or A*s in 2016, this year the proportion rose to 25%, helped by stronger results among boys.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the changes in exam structure meant pupils now struggled with less guidance in how they were performing.
The proportion of students in Wales awarded A*-C grades rose above 75%, the highest since 2009.
“It’s the fact that you haven’t got a staging post at the end of year 12 or – as you had a few years ago – modules at the end of each term,” Barton said.
“These set of results show an encouraging increase in the number achieving the top grades, with improvement in results across maths, biology, chemistry and physics,” Kirsty Williams, the Welsh education secretary, said during a visit to a school in Newport.
Among the 13 reformed subjects, the proportion of candidates gaining A* and A grades fell compared with last year’s results. The 13 saw a combined decline to 24.3% awarded the top grades, while the non-reformed subjects moved in the opposite direction.
The results were the first for 14 reformed A-level subjects in Wales, with overhauled content but retaining integrated AS-level exams at the end of the first year.
Among the reformed subjects, there were falls in the number of A* and As awarded in physics, chemistry and biology. In some cases, such as history, boys increased their share of top grades while those of girls fell. In English, the proportion of students achieving C grades or better fell by almost three percentage points.
Michael Turner, the JCQ’s director general, said the overall UK picture was “steady” with small increases in the top grades.
Mark Bedlow, a director of the OCR examination board, suggested that the removal of AS-level exams means students may be less likely to be “filtered out” by schools if they were struggling in particular subjects.
“There may be several factors influencing the performance of males and females in reformed A-levels in England, and of course it is too early to draw any firm conclusions,” said Turner.
“The changes and the results we’re seeing in the reformed subjects year on year are not abnormal and can really be ascribed to changes in students’ abilities based on their prior year attainment,” said Bedlow.
Mark Bedlow, director of regulation at the OCR exam board, warned against reading too much into the apparent improvement in boys’ performance. “There are some potentially interesting gender patterns, but it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions,” he said.
Students in Wales also celebrated better than expected results, with the proportion awarded A*-C grades rising above 75% for the first time since since 2009.
“In reformed subjects females are performing as well, if not better than males though there is a narrowing of the gap in results between males and females at those high grades.”
The annual process of clearing and adjustment – where students accept offers for undergraduate study from universities or seek new courses – got off to a slow start, with Ucas reporting a 2% fall in the number of acceptances by Thursday morning.
He said it was too early to say whether the scrapping of teacher-assessed coursework and reliance instead on end-of-year exams, was working in boys’ favour and pointed out that in Wales, where A-levels are still assessed on a modular basis, boys’ performance had also improved.
The clearing house said that 416,310 applicants of all types have been accepted into higher education through Ucas, including 26,090 EU students, a fall of 3% compared with 2016.
The emerging pattern may be more to do with prior attainment, rather than gender, said Bedlow, adding: “It will be interesting to see as we progress through the reforms whether this pattern becomes a trend and whether the gender gap at A-level closes.”
But the number of UK school-leavers accepting places was 201,270, the highest number recorded on A-level results day, offset by a fall in applications from mature and part-time students.
On the relatively better performance of students sitting unreformed subjects, Bedlow said prior attainment had also played a part. Maths and further maths, for example, are still unreformed and traditionally attract high-performing candidates who achieve higher grades.
Clare Marchant, Ucas’s chief executive, said the picture was complicated. “We are seeing a growing proportion of 18-year-olds going into higher education, and greater numbers of students from our most deprived communities are securing places. At the same time, we are seeing fewer older students taking places, and a fall in numbers from the EU,” Marchant said.
One of the key changes in science subjects in particular is the increase in the mathematical content in the new qualifications, which may have had an impact on performance.
The Office for Fair Access (Offa) pointed to new figures showing that the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds gaining places had risen again this year.
Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, praised students and their teachers. “These results have been achieved by the hard work and commitment of young people and their teachers,” she said, “despite the upheaval to syllabuses and year-on-year cuts to resources.“In the face of such turbulence, it is a tribute to the hard work and dedication of teachers and students that standards overall have been maintained.”
“These students have overcome barriers that many others do not face, and I applaud their effort and dedication. They will find that higher education is a rewarding and life-changing experience, as it was for me,” said Les Ebdon, the director of fair access to higher education.
The statistics show sharp falls in the number of students sitting English and history, but there were sharp increases in the numbers taking political studies, up 13%, as evidence of a “Corbyn effect” among 17- and 18-year-olds.
“Unfortunately, some young people have picked up exam results today that do not reflect their full potential, because they have been held back by socio-economic or educational disadvantage.”
There were also further rises in the so-called Stem subjects, with maths, further maths and geography all rising despite a fall in the number of 18-year-olds nationally.
Among those going to university will be Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2012 and subsequently won the Nobel peace prize for her work encouraging girls into education.
The schools minister, Nick Gibb, welcomed the increase in sciences and maths entries as a way of improving access to higher education.
After taking her A-levels at Edgbaston high school for girls in Birmingham, Yousafzai will study for a degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University from September.
“There has been a strong uptake in core subjects, such as maths, which continues to be the most popular A-level, with maths and further maths having nearly 25% more entries than in 2010,” Gibb said.
“This and increasing entries to science, technology, engineering and maths subjects bodes well for the economic prosperity of our country. It will help to grow our workforce in these sectors, allowing young people to secure well-paid jobs and compete in the global jobs market of post-Brexit Britain.”
As expected, there were sizeable increases in the top grades awarded to students taking modern foreign languages, with A and A*s rising by 2.5% in Spanish and 1.8% in German and 1.7% in French – after years of complaints that the exams were graded too harshly.
The improved performance came after the exam regulator in England, Ofqual, adjusted the proportion of top grades awarded to candidates, following research showing that native speakers taking the subjects had skewed the results.
Among the outstanding results this year were those of two brothers, Mujahid and Mustaqueem Shiffa, who both received three A*s after studying at the Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology, a university technical college.
Mustaqueem is just 16 years old. The pair plan to study for physics and chemistry degrees at Nottingham University later this year.
For the hundreds of thousands of pupils hoping to go on to higher education this autumn, Thursday morning’s A-level results will have determined whether they were successful in meeting conditional offers based on their final grades.
Last year more than 65,000 students found places on undergraduate courses through the clearing and adjustment process.
In most cases they had received results that were lower than they had expected. But in an increasing number of instances students have taken advantage of better than expected grades to gain places on courses they had previously thought to be out of reach.
This year a large number of universities – including members of the selective Russell Group of universities – report places still available on a wide range of courses, as they seek to expand despite a fall-off in applications from older students and those from elsewhere in the EU.
The results were the first involving reformed A-levels that have been decoupled from AS-levels in England taken midway through the two-year course, and examining new content. The figures showed a further steep decline in the number of pupils sitting AS-levels, which are now optional, down by nearly 40%.
This year, 13 exam subjects had been overhauled, including English, psychology, history, biology, chemistry, physics, economics and sociology.
Next year, geography, music and Spanish will be among the new-style exams. Reformed maths and further maths will be taught from this September and examined for the first time in 2019.
Sally Collier, the head of Ofqual, has sought to reassure students that the grades for the reformed courses had been awarded in the same way as previous years.
“We have overseen the A-level awarding process in the same way as in previous years and have not intervened to ask any exam board to change the grade boundaries they have set this summer,” Collier said.
