The government is successfully tackling A-level grade inflation

After the disruption caused to education by the pandemic, this is the first year since 2019 in which school leavers have sat traditional A-level exams. Normally, 26 per cent of A-level students are marked A or higher: last year it jumped to 45 per cent after teacher-assessed grades were brought in. Now it’s 36 per cent, as per the government’s plan to mark a halfway house between last year’s grade hyperinflation and normality. But A* grades, normally reserved for the top 8 per cent of pupils, have been handed to 15 per cent. This is slightly down on last year’s 19 per cent.

For the first time in ten years (in a full, externally assessed exam season), girls have outperformed boys when it comes to getting A* A-level grades. Around 57 per cent of those awarded three A* grades were female, compared with 53 per cent last year and 43 per cent in 2019. This is the last metric in which boys traditionally outperformed girls. However, boys took back the crown when it came to maths, getting a higher proportion of the top grades than girls, who outstripped them for the first time last year. Maths was also the most popular subject overall, with 95,635 entries – while English faced the largest fall in uptake of any subject, with the number of candidates falling by more than 9 per cent to 35,791. Boys also excelled at modern languages, a realm usually dominated by female pupils. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, private schools faced a huge drop in the number of pupils getting the top grades: around 58 per cent were awarded As or above this year, compared with 70 per cent last year when teachers made the grade decisions. The drop was mirrored in state schools, too – but nowhere near as dramatically: a fall of 7 per cent to 50 per cent. And the proportion of A* grades awarded to privately educated pupils also fell sharply, by 11 per cent, closing the attainment gap with state schools a little more.

Regional differences were stark. Around 31 per cent of pupils in the north-east of the country achieved three A grades or higher, compared with almost 40 per cent in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and 39 per cent in London. Much as the government pushes its commitment to levelling up, it is clear that the attainment gap between pupils in the north and south of the country is still a sticking point.  Kath Thomas, interim chief of the JCQ (the umbrella council for exam boards) said this year’s results ‘represent a huge milestone in our recovery from the pandemic’ and praised ‘the ‘diligence and resilience’ of young people and staff. It is thought that more than 40,000 pupils could miss out on their first choice of university if they drop a grade (partly due to the number of school leavers growing by 2.9 per cent this year and universities being oversubscribed last year after grade inflation). But today’s figures show that the government’s aim – of getting A-level grade inflation back under control after the pandemic – appears to be on the right track.