GCSE Results Day 2024: The key results and trends

Education specialist Amber Allott discusses the national trends as hundreds of young people receive their exam results.

Transcript

00:00This year's GCSE results are now in for thousands of students across England, Wales and Northern

00:05Ireland, and we've noticed a few key trends. Overall, GCSE results are for the most part

00:11quite similar to last year's, so this exam season was England's second without special

00:16pandemic considerations, and it was the first for Northern Ireland and Wales.

00:20According to Ofqual, this suggests we're settling back into a pattern of more dependable

00:24and trustworthy results, after grades shot up substantially for a couple of years there.

00:30But even though it is within the normal range, the overall pass rate,

00:34so that's grades above A4 for GCSEs, and the amount of top grades awarded, so 7s are up,

00:40equivalent to A, have both fallen a little on the 2023 results.

00:45We've also noticed that in general, girls are achieving at a higher level than boys,

00:49although the gap is a little narrower than it was in years past.

00:53Of students in England who achieved all grade 9s, the highest ones available,

00:58and at least 7 subjects this year, 65% of them were female, or just 35% were male.

01:04There's also a bit of a gap between the regions persisting this year,

01:08with London having 28.5% of its total grades at a 7 or above.

01:13Now this is a difference of more than 10 percentage points from the North East,

01:17which only had 17.8% of its grades at that higher level.

01:22Finally, this year's top 10 subjects have actually stayed the same as last year,

01:27with the Science Double Award, Maths, and English Language naturally topping the list,

01:32but there are a few traditionally less popular subjects that are seeing big gains this year.

01:37These include Spanish, Computer Science, Music, and Statistics.