Top grades awarded to this year’s GCSE students will fall, with more pupils failing and a slight narrowing of the girls’ lead over boys, an education expert has suggested. In line with the move back towards pre-pandemic grading, there could be some 230,000 fewer top grades in the UK compared with 2021, but 230,000 more than 2019, Professor Alan Smithers predicted.
The director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham said the pattern was likely to be similar to the change seen in A-level results on Thursday, when grades fell from pandemic highs, but remained above 2019 levels. Last year, the proportion of GCSE entries awarded top grades surged to an all-time high after exams were cancelled for the second year in a row due to Covid-19 and students were instead given results determined by their teachers.
Overall, 28.9% of UK GCSE entries were awarded one of the top grades, up by 2.7 percentage points on 2020. In 2019, when exams were last held, only a fifth (20.8%) of entries achieved at least a 7 or an A grade.
