Education: First ever fall in GCSE top grades

Teachers have raised concerns about English exams with schools reporting an unprecedented number of fails among their pupils.

School staff have complained that exam boards substantially increased grade boundaries, leaving pupils with lower results than expected.

Around 600,000 teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their GCSE results today.

The national figures show drops in the percentage of English, maths and science GCSE entries achieving passes at A*-C.

However despite this downturn schools across Yorkshire have been celebrating record results this morning.

Roundhay School in Leeds has had 70 per cent of exams graded at between A* and C - their best ever results

Associate deputy head Lorraine Bowman saidd: ‘To have had our best ever GCSE results we believe of 70 per cent five plus A*-C including English and maths on top of the outstanding A-level results makes this a terrific start to the new academic year. It is a tribute to the enormous amount of effort our students, their families, associate and teaching staff have put into supporting one another to enable, right across the ability range, these wonderful results to be achieved.”

Sheffield High School also celebrated record results this morning

Pupils at the independent all girls school saw 77 per cent of the grades awarded were either A* or A s with almost half resulting in an A* - an eight per cent rise from 2011, breaking all previous records.

The school’s top student Clare Rees-Zimmerman achieved an incredible 13 GCSE A*s, one AS and two A levels all at grade A and above.

The school’s head Valerie Dunsford said: “I am absolutely delighted with these results and I am extremely proud of what the pupils and staff have achieved which is over and above our expectations especially when we are told the examination bodies are restricting the number of top grades .”

Nationally figures reveal that 69.4 per cent of all GCSE exams were given at least a C grade - down 0.4 percentage points on last summer.

It is the first time the A*-C pass rate has fallen in the 24-year history of GCSEs. The exams were first taught in 1986 when they replaced the O-level, with the first exams taken in 1988.

There was also a fall in the proportion of GCSEs awarded the top grades, today’s data shows.

Some 7.3% of entries were given an A*, down 0.5 percentage points on 2011, while 22.4% were handed at least an A grade, down 0.8 percentage points.

The statistics show a decrease in the proportion of GCSEs awarded at least a C grade in the core subjects of English, maths and science.

* In English, 63.9% of entries got at least a C, compared to 65.4% last summer, while 15% were awarded an A or A*, down from 16.8% in 2011;

* In English literature, 76.3 per cent of exams were awarded A*-C, compared to 78.4% last year, and 23.2 per cent got at least an A, against 25 per cent in 2011;

* In maths, 58.4 per cent of entries got at least a C grade, down from 58.8 per cent in 2011, and 15.4 per cent got A*-A, compared to 16.5 per cent last summer;

* In science, 60.7% got A*-C grades, down from 62.9 per cent and 9.8 per cent got A*-A, down from 11.6 per cent in 2011.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which publishes today’s national results, insisted that the drop in A*-C English results is partly down to more candidates sitting the exam earlier, during the winter exam season.

The number of entries for English GCSE, including English literature, has increased by 3.1 per cent, JCQ said.

It added that there was a “dramatic” increase in entries for science GCSE - up 36.5 per cent - and said that the fall in results at A*-C in this subject is partly due to a “more demanding standard” introduced this year, and a “significant” increase in entries by 15-year-olds.

Around 600,000 teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving their GCSE results today.

The results were published amid a brewing row over this year’s GCSE English.

Teachers have raised concerns that English exams have been marked too harshly, with schools reporting an unprecedented number of fails among their pupils.

School staff have complained that exam boards substantially increased grade boundaries, leaving pupils with lower results than expected.

The gap between girls and boys stalled at the very top grades, with 18.9 per cent of boys’ entries achieving an A* and A, compared to 25.6% of girls’ entries - a percentage gap of 6.7%, the same as there was in 2011.

At grades A* to C, girls are pulling away, with 65.4% of boys’ entries attaining that level, compared to 73.3 per cent of girls’ entries. Last year, 66 per cent of boys’ entries achieved A* to C, compared to 73.5 per cent of girls’ entries.

The long decline in the take-up of modern foreign languages appeared to be slowing this year, with even a rise of 10 per cent in the number of those sitting Spanish GCSE.

The number of entries for French fell by 0.5%, compared to a 13.2% fall last year, and the entries for German fell by 5.5 per cent compared to a 13.2 per cent fall in 2011.

There was a rise of 13.7 per cent in the uptake of other modern languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese and Italian, which all saw significant increases.

Michael Turner, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, said: “These are a good set of results and students and teachers should be pleased with what they have achieved.

“It will be interesting to see if this year’s rise in students taking Spanish and the rate of decline slowing in French and German is the beginning of a trend that will see more young people studying languages.”