You might be forgiven for glancing at this year's GCSE results and thinking not much has changed. And sure, if you're just looking at the pass rate across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, that would be more or less correct. But, when you dig into the detail, you find a more complicated picture, where some existing issues have become even more stark.
You'll see the grades of students resitting their English and maths GCSEs in England are dragging down the overall results in those subjects - all part of a system the government itself says is "demoralising" and needs fixing. You'll see that boys' and girls' grades are looking more similar - though that's more to do with girls slipping than boys improving. And you'll see that, despite the government's pledges to "tackle entrenched inequality", the regional divide in England has actually grown, and remains stubbornly higher than it was before Covid.
Here are five key things you need to know. The GCSE pass rate has remained stable – with 67.3% of all grades across England, Wales and Northern Ireland at 4/C and above. That's only very slightly down from 67.4% last year.
What we're seeing is a picture of consistency, broadly, after years of flux in 2020 and 2021 when exams were cancelled because of the Covid pandemic and results were based on teachers' assessments. In fact, today's pass rate is exactly the same as it was in 2019. You can see how results were in your local area using the look-up tool below.
Within each nation, too, the proportion of GCSEs marked at 4/C hasn't changed much: 83.6% in Northern Ireland, up from 83.5% And the proportion of top grades across all three nations – marked at 7/A or above - has also remained steady, rising very slightly from 21.9% last year to 22% this year. Nearly a quarter of maths and English GCSEs were taken by people aged 17 and older this year. They made up 24.3% of maths and English language grades in England – compared to 23.4% last year.
Some of those older candidates will be mature students sitting exams for the first time, but most will be young people resitting papers. In England, pupils who don't get at least grade 4s in their maths and English GCSEs have to continue studying for them alongside their next course - their A-levels or their T-level, for example. Resitting is not a requirement, according to the Department for Education (DfE), but colleges generally enter students into exams when they think they're ready.
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