The students who this week collected their A-level results overcame a formidable set of challenges. The class of 2023 were plunged into their first formal examinations only this summer, having been awarded their GCSEs by teacher assessment due to the pandemic. They belong to a cohort that is still emerging from the huge social and psychological disruptions caused by the Covid years, as schools only gradually return to an even keel.
Those who made the grades they hoped for, and those who did the same in T-levels and BTecs, are therefore entitled to consider that an exceptional achievement. Those who did not were extremely unlucky to find themselves at the wrong end of highly unusual circumstances. The government’s decision to reimpose pre-pandemic grading in England on this year group – an example not followed in Wales or Northern Ireland – was premature. As expected, the consequence was the biggest-ever decline in results, with the proportion of A* and A grades falling from 35.9% to 26.5%. At the other end of the scale, there was a sharp increase in the number of low grades awarded, compared with 2019.
