That’s it from me today, thanks for joining the GCSE live blog and well done to everyone who worked so hard for their GCSEs.
I’ll leave you with this lovely picture of “our lovely Agnes” sent in by Craig McWilliam, who wrote: “Hi! Our lovely Agnes is very happy – better than expected (including a 9 in Spanish). Everyone v cheerful and champagne at 8am!”
Cheers! Hope you all enjoy a nice lunchtime nap.
Updated
The Welsh education minister, Jeremy Miles, has praised the resilience of students.
He said:
It’s been a difficult year for the people sitting the exams. They’ve been sitting exams for the first time and have done extraordinarily well. It’s great testament to their resilience and their focus. The results are slightly below last year as anticipated and above 2019 which we were hoping to see.
Compared with England, results appear slightly worse. According to the PA Media news agency, the percentage of students who received top grades was 25.1% in Wales compared with 26% in England. The pass rate overall in Wales was 68.6%, against 73% in England.
But Miles said:
I don’t think it is a sensible comparison in the context of Covid. All countries in the UK have adopted a broadly similar approach but the way qualifications are structured means you can’t draw those direct comparisons.
Updated
Reeeeeally interesting little thread on Twitter from the FT’s economics editor, Chris Giles, who points out that private schools have seen a big drop in results this year. Why? They were the masters of exam grade fiddling and as a result have had “a shocker of a year this year compared with last”, he says. The last chart is … enlightening!
Exam grade fiddling GCSE edition
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) August 25, 2022
Private schools were masters of this particular art when they graded themselves
1/ pic.twitter.com/mi34FzcsSo
No - this result is not caused by private schools having a denser distribution of grades around 7 and above
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) August 25, 2022
a) look at grammar schools
b) Look at how private schools lost more of their uplift this year
2/ pic.twitter.com/8H4Em32lyP
And for completeness here are the raw results, showing one school type to have had a shocker of a year this year compared with last.
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) August 25, 2022
ENDS pic.twitter.com/0A1o3HYs7A
Updated
Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First Girls, says not enough girls are taking computer science. Pretty shocking stat: at this rate there will only be one qualified woman for every 115 roles in the tech job market by 2025.
She says:
Consistently over the last few years, girls have only made up 20% of Computing GCSE entrants. This underrepresentation of women is carried into employment with women making up just 21% of the tech industry, and black women less than 3%.
The UK’s tech job market is projected to be worth £30bn by 2025 - six times larger than it is now. But as things stand, there will only be 1 qualified woman for every 115 roles by 2025. Women are not benefiting from the salary and career opportunities afforded by the tech industry, and with more roles being advertised than candidates, the tech industry is unable to access the talent it needs to fill its growing skills gap.
It is clear that the current system is failing to build the diverse tech talent pipelines needed, and schools, universities and the wider industry must recognise and remove the barriers that are standing in the way of women pursuing tech education, as well as making all students aware of the options available to them.
Julia Polley, of the Wensleydale school – in Rishi Sunak’s leafy Richmondshire constituency – has been in touch, pointing out that it’s not only a north-south divide but that rural schools face particular challenges.
She says:
The differences between the north and south aren’t new – the impact of the pandemic has perhaps brought it to light more acutely than before. Not all northern schools have the same access to opportunities as many southern schools and they are dealing with this disadvantage on top of the challenges unique to them. For example, as a rural school, small shifts in our year group numbers impacts us greatly and also affects funding. There is an opportunity for the government to respond to these results , levelling up won’t work unless the disparity in educational opportunities is addressed.
Updated
The gap between England’s top achieving region (London) has grown compared with all other regions since the last time the results were exam-based back in 2019.
One third of London’s GCSE students achieved the highest proportion of top grades (a 7 or above, equivalent to an A* or A grade under the old system).
This is 10.2 percentage points higher than the two worst-performing regions – the North-east and Yorkshire and the Humber (22.4%).
The equivalent gap between London and Yorkshire and the Humber increased from 7.9 points in 2019 to 10.2 points this year, a 2.3-point increase, and widened by 2.4 points between the capital and the North-west and by 2.7 points compared with the East Midlands.
The proportion of top grades increased in all regions compared with 2019 with the steepest increase in London (up 7 percentage points to 32.6%) and the lowest in the East Midlands (up 4.2 percentage points to 22.5%).
However, compared to 2021, fewer students have been awarded a top grade this year in all regions, with the highest drop being recorded in the South-west (down 4 percentage points).
The Ofqual analysis is based on all students taking the exams, not just 16-year-olds.
Updated
I asked for joyful young people and the Isle of Sheppey delivered! Thanks to Oasis academy for sending this in.
Updated
If you haven’t got quite the results you wanted today, this is a nice story which shows it needn’t be the end of the world.
Sasha Chaudhri, 57, who left school at 16 with no qualifications, did a degree as a mature student and went on to have a successful career in law.
But today Sasha, from Merton, south London, has finally passed her English and maths GCSEs because she is going to retrain as a teacher, with help from the charity Now Teach, co-founded by the FT journalist Lucy Kellaway.
Sasha says:
After a challenging time, I left school at 16 after failing all my exams. Despite this, my passion for English spurred me on to successfully achieve a first in law at university at the age of 32, followed by a very rewarding career in the corporate world.
Despite over 20 years of working for the big names such as Grant Thornton and Royal London, I started feeling unfulfilled. I did some soul searching and reached the decision to follow a new career path in teaching English. I want to inspire students, and to help them to obtain a good foundation of the English language to enable them to pursue their dreams.
Her advice if things haven’t gone as planned today?
I would say to students that did not achieve the grade they wanted, that some of the most brilliant minds have failed at many things, and the fact that they keep persevering eventually makes them stronger. It is that journey that provides you with the opportunity to learn to conquer life’s obstacles.
This is a good one! 57-year-old Sasha Chaudhri left school at 16 with no qualifications but did a degree in her 30s and went into law. This morning she finally passed her English and Maths GSCE – and is now going to train to become a teacher with @NowTeachOrg #gcseresults2022 pic.twitter.com/gJ7EqaV0s6
— Alexandra Topping (@LexyTopping) August 25, 2022
Updated
Let’s have a look at what the most popular subjects were this year, courtesy of my colleague Ashley Kirk.
Given that they are compulsory subjects it is no surprise that double science (which counts as two exams), maths and English topped the most popular subjects list.
The interesting bits come further down the charts with 16-year-olds in England tending to move away from the arts in favour of subjects such as business, Spanish and geography.
All three saw double-digit percentage growth in the number of students sitting them since 2019. Business grew 12.5% to 97,345 this year, Spanish 11.5% to 103,790 and geography 10.1% to 271,862.
However, the greatest surges in popularity were in food preparation and nutrition, other modern languages and social science subjects.
On the other hand, performing and expressive arts, physical education, design and technology, media studies, German and engineering all saw their number of students fall by more than 10% since 2019.
Updated
Once again, as with A-levels last week, there is anger about the north-south divide in today’s GCSE results.
Henri Murison, the chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which speaks for business and civic leaders across the north, said:
Once again, we’re seeing evidence of gaping regional disparities in today’s GCSE results, particularly between the north and London in grade 7 and above results.
Sadly, this is not all that surprising when we consider the triple whammy of factors that will have had an impact on this attainment gap – existing long-term disadvantage, learning loss during Covid and DfE failures in catch up and the national tutoring programme – all of which affect the north of England disproportionately.
Our young people cannot go on paying the price for Department for Education failure, nor can our economy. As they consider study in the future, the most competitive routes such as future university entry or degree and wider apprenticeships have young people competing from across the UK.
Northern kids will be at a disadvantage in those processes as a result of the failings of the current government, and cutting Opportunity Areas is a recipe for them to make it worse in years to come – not better.
Updated
As the long wait for GCSE results comes to an end this morning, head teachers are already looking ahead to next year’s exams and calling on the government to consider further mitigations, arguing that next year’s candidates have also had their learning disrupted by Covid.
The government wants to return to pre-pandemic norms at GCSE and A-level next year, having reached a halfway house with this year’s results, which are pitched midway between the record grades of 2021 which were based on teacher-assessment, and 2019 results when exams were last sat.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said:
Moving to this midpoint was done to give these pupils more leeway than directly returning to the 2019 standard in order to mitigate the impact of Covid on their education. Adaptations were also made to exams for this reason.
The government and Ofqual will now need to decide whether to put mitigations in place for next year. The strong indication we are hearing from school and college leaders is that this must happen because next year’s cohort will have also been heavily impacted by Covid. This is particularly important given the likelihood of more waves of infections during the autumn and winter.
Here’s a first take on those figures by our crack data team Pamela Duncan and Ashley Kirk
The wait is over for GCSE students and the results are somewhere between the highs of recent teacher-assessed years and pre-pandemic grades.
A quarter of GCSE results ended in a fail grade, up from 20.9% in 2021 among 16-year-olds in England, but well below the 2019 levels when three in every 10 exams resulted in 3 or below, broadly equivalent to a D in the old grading system.
A quarter of 16-year-olds sitting GCSE mathematics – 146,000 students – failed the subject as did 22% of those taking English. Both subjects are compulsory at GCSE level.
The maths fail rate is still down on the 2019 results, the last non-pandemic academic year, where the fail rate was 28.5%. Likewise, in English, a fail rate of 22.2% was more than two percentage points higher than the last two years but down on 2019’s level of 28.5%.
Top grades fell, albeit not as steeply: 27% of sittings resulted in students getting a 7 grade or higher – equivalent to A and A* – down three percentage points this year compared with 2021.
This rate was inflated during the pandemic when teacher-assessed grades came into effect, where the 7-and-above rate climbed to 27.5% in 2020 and 30% in 2021, but this was meant to have fallen this year. It has done slightly, by three percentage points on last year.
Updated
GCSE results show fall in top grades and pass rate in England
The proportion of top grades among the GCSE results for 16-year-olds in England has fallen since last year, with the overall pass rate also down, after pupils whose education has been disrupted by the pandemic sat the first examinations in three years.
My colleagues Sally Weale, Richard Adams, Pamela Duncan and Ashley Kirk report:
Top grades of 7 and above – equivalent to A and A* – were down three percentage points this summer, in line with government plans to tackle grade inflation over the last two years, and bring results gradually down to pre-pandemic levels.
The proportion of pupils achieving grade 4 and above – 4 is a pass – also fell by four percentage points, from 79% last year to 75%, meaning thousands more pupils could now face resits in English and maths.
Girls continued to outperform boys – nearly one in three entries by girls in England got a grade 7 or above (30.7%) – though the gender gap at the highest grades narrowed by 1.6 percentage points compared with last year.
Figures published by England’s exams regulator Ofqual, meanwhile, showed that 2,193 16-year-olds in England got grade 9 in all their subjects – including 13 students who completed 12 GCSEs.
The fall in top grades – 7s, 8s and 9s – is not as sharp as last week’s A-level results, which saw greater grade inflation during the pandemic. At A-level, results awarded in England, Wales and Northern Ireland revealed top grades down by 8.4 percentage points on last year’s record results, while A*s alone decreased by 4.5 points.
Education minister Will Quince has been doing the media rounds this morning, taking the lead from Rishi Sunak and blaming those uppity scientists for all the things that went wrong in the pandemic.
[You can read Sunak’s comments about how it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the coronavirus pandemic and that his opposition to closing schools was met with silence during one meeting here:]
Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain about Tory leadership candidate Rishi Sunak’s claim that it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the Covid-19 pandemic, Quince said:
So, I think there are a number of things which we did during the pandemic, which was a once-in-100-years event, that we wouldn’t do again.
And, in my view, one of those is closing schools. We wouldn’t be closing schools with the information we now have at the time.
I wasn’t an education minister at the time, I was at the Department for Work and Pensions, but I remember what that time was like. We were to some extent flying blind. It was something that hadn’t happened in the past 100 years. And we had to rely on the best available information at the time from scientists and medical experts and act in good faith.Would we do things differently now? Yes. Were mistakes made throughout the course of the pandemic? Yes, of course they were.
“But we’ve learned from that, and, as a result, I think it is highly unlikely that, in the future, we would consider closing schools, knowing what we now know about the impact that it had on young people.
Speaking on Times Radio about GCSE regional disparities because of Covid-19 Quince said:
It’s a huge priority. Ensuring that wherever you live up and down our country that you have access to a world-class education, and you have the same opportunity - whether you live in Bournemouth or Barnsley - is really important to us, and every year up until the pandemic we’ve been closing the attainment gap.
The pandemic has without question set us back on that mission. But to say that I am back on that with gusto would be an understatement.
It is my mission as schools ministers to ensure that wherever you live in our country, that you have that same level of opportunity.
Updated
The head of the headteachers’ union has warned that GCSE results will be uneven across the country because of the varying impact of the pandemic – describing the government’s Covid recovery programme as “lacklustre and chaotic”.
The number of top grades at A-level fell sharply this year and a similar decline is anticipated for GCSE grades as the government seeks to reverse the grade inflation caused by teacher assessment during the pandemic.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said:
The fact that grades will be lower than last year is no reflection on the performance of pupils but the result of a decision by the government and exam regulator Ofqual to begin returning grades to the 2019 standard in two steps.
GCSE marks reached an all-time high in 2021 as 28.9% of pupils were awarded one of the top grades after exams were cancelled and results were instead determined by their teachers.
This year there could be 230,000 fewer top grades in the UK compared with 2021, but 230,000 more than 2019, according to Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at the University of Buckingham.
The disruption to learning experienced across the country despite remote learning would also result in uneven results, Barton said.
Schools have not been helped by the government’s lacklustre and chaotic support for education recovery.
Read the full story by my colleague Geneva Abdul here:
Updated
This year’s GCSE results for England and Wales are expected to confirm a widening north-south education gap, prompting a prediction that the government will miss one of its key levelling-up targets if it continues to hold back pupils in the north of England.
My colleague Matt Weaver reports:
A coalition of school leaders, charities and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has written to the Conservative leadership candidates urging them to commit to fixing growing regional disparities in education.
They predicted Thursday’s results would show 24.4% of pupils in the north-east of England achieving GSCE grade seven or above, compared with 37.8% in London. The forecast followed “stark” regional disparities that were exposed in A-level results last week, with the top grades falling faster in the north-east compared with the south-east.
The joint letter told Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss that the government’s levelling up target of increasing exam standards in the worst performing areas by a third by 2030 would not happen unless “place-based challenges, such as health and housing” were also addressed at the same time.
The letter by the Northern Powerhouse, Schools North East and the education charity Shine, said: “Regional disparities in attainment are getting worse, not better.”
Read the full piece here:
Good morning! And welcome to the Guardian’s GCSE liveblog, where I’ll be keeping you up to date with all the news.
This is the first year that students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will get GCSE results which – for the first time in two years – are based on public exams. Noting the serious disruption that students faced during the Covid pandemic, this year’s grade boundaries will be more generous, exam boards have said.
We’ll have a better picture of what has happened nationally soon, but we also want to hear your stories! Did you or a family member get the grades they wanted? How has the experience been? And what are your plans now? Please send lovely pics to me on alexandra.topping@theguardian.com or tweet me on @lexytopping because it really is the best bit of doing the liveblog!
