GCSE results day 2024: Girls continue to dominate this year - as pass rate and top grades see small dips

• Overall, GCSE results this year are largely in line with last year.
• The overall pass rate and amount of top grades awarded have both fallen a little.
• Female students are still coming out of top when it comes to grades - but the gap is narrowing.
• The most popular subjects have stayed the same, but some traditionally less popular subjects have seen a rise in numbers.

This year’s GCSE candidates will be descending on their schools en masse today to find out how they fared in their GCSEs - and what it could mean for their future studies.

Thursday, 22 August is results day for secondary school pupils across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland who sat their GCSE - or General Certificate of Secondary Education - exams this year. This has been the UK’s biggest ever assessment series, with more than 6.5 million results to be issued.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) says that this year’s percentage of top grades and overall pass rate have fallen a little, although the dip is not out of the ordinary.

But how did the 2024 cohort do overall, especially looking at gender and regional differences? Here’s what you need to know:

GCSE results for 2024 at a glance

The total number of GCSEs taken has shot up by nearly 5% this year, to almost 6.2 million across the UK. The overall pass rate, or candidates who achieved at least a 4 (equivalent to a C grade) on the GCSE 9-1 grading scale, has fallen a little this year, from 68.2% in 2023 to 67.6% this year. The number of top grades of 7 and up (equivalent to As) is also down a little, from 22% to 21.8% of all exams sat.

However, both still represent an improvement on 2019’s grades, before the years of disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of 7/A grades has risen from 20.8% to 21.8% since then, while the general pass rate has risen from 67.3% to 67.6%.

Students sat at average of 7.76 GCSEs this year, according to the JCQ. Most were sat by 16-year-olds, but this year has seen the number of students 17 and over rise by more than 20% on last year - making up 7% of all entries.

Overall, Ofqual - the government’s qualifications regulator - says that this year’s results are on par with last year’s in England at least, showing that the country “has settled back into a pattern of dependable and trustworthy results” post-pandemic. England returned to pre-pandemic grading in 2023, while Wales and Northern Ireland only dropped the last of their special considerations this year.

A number of other qualifications besides GCSEs have also been awarded today, including vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs). JCQ says that nearly 400 thousand will be handed out on results day, including 360 thousand brand new tech awards. About 13 thousand (3.5% of all entries) got top grades, and the most popular subject was leisure, travel and tourism.

By gender

Across the UK, GCSE results have remained higher for female students than male students this year - but the gap has narrowed a little.

Overall, 24.7% of all entries by female students achieved a grade of 7/A or above, compared to 19% by male students. When it comes to the general pass rate of 4/C and above, 73.7% of 16-year-old female student entries passed, compared to 67% for males.

The JCQ says the difference between the genders has fallen 0.2 percentage points for top grades on last year, and 0.1 percentage points for the overall pass rate.

However, when it comes to students who sat at least 7 GCSEs and managed to achieve all 9s - the very highest grade available - girls are continuing to dominate. Ofqual says that in England, 65% of them were female, and just 35% male.

By region

Attainment gaps for top grades across England’s regions unfortunately appear to have remained an issue this year. When it comes to grades 7/A and above, Greater London pupils have come out on top again with 28.5% total - a small increase on last year, according to Ofqual’s data.

But although it has grown a little on last year, the North East still has the lowest figure in the country, with just 17.8% of all grades awarded being 7s or up.

The rest of the regions ‘A rates’, in order, are: the South East at 24.7%; the East of England at 21.4%; the South West at 21.2%; the North West at 18.6%; the West Midlands at 18.5%; and Yorkshire and the East Midlands - both on 18.3%.

Northern Ireland had a very high percentage of 7/A grades awarded overall this year, at 31%.

Most popular subjects

This year’s top 10 most popular GCSE subjects remain unchanged from last year, JCQ says. They are:

1. Science - double award (sat by 980,786 pupils)
2. Mathematics (sat by 878,165)
3. English language (sat by 845,834)
4. English literature (sat by 655,905)
5. History (sat by 325,437)
6. Geography (sat by 297,411)
7. Religious studies (sat by 245,019)
8. Art and design (sat by 208,934)
9. Biology (sat by 194,925)
10. Chemistry (sat by 185,274)

There were naturally big increases in the number of students sitting English language and mathematics, but there were also spikes in popularity for some of the smaller subjects as well - including Spanish, business studies, music, and computer science. Statistics saw a big overall rise of 19.9% on last year.

The government has issued some advice for parents and carers supporting students as they receive their exam results on GCSE results day. This can often be a tense and emotionally fraught time, especially if things don’t go as expected. You can check this advice out online here.