Eve Davies
The first GCSE students to sit exams for three years in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland received their results from 8:00 BST on Thursday 25 August.
As expected, this year’s GCSE pass rate has fallen since 2021, but remains higher than in 2019. The marks needed for each grade were more lenient this year to account for disturbances in pupils’ learning due to lockdowns.
Therefore, the proportion of students receiving top grades this year—7/As and above—is 26.3 per cent. That is roughly midway between the totals for 2019 (20.8 per cent) and 2021 (28.9 per cent).
Similarly, 73.2 per cent of GCSEs were marked at grades 4/C and above this year. This is down from 77.1 per cent last year, when grades were decided by teachers, but still significantly higher than in 2019, when it was 67.3 per cent.
After significant disruption in education as schools shifted between online, asynchronous, and remote learning, it is understandable that students were particularly nervous this year.
“the education system has been criticised for regional disparities”
Find out how students have been feeling about the impact on their education here.
Response to this year’s GCSE results
“It’s been a difficult year for the people sitting the exams. They’ve been sitting exams for the first time and have done extraordinarily well.” Praised Welsh Education Minister, Jeremy Miles. “It’s great testament to their resilience and their focus. The results are slightly below last year as anticipated and above 2019 which we were hoping to see”.
“pupils in London are given an unfair advantage”
But it was not all praise—the education system has been criticised for regional disparities. People have called out a rural-urban divide, along with the North-South divide, claiming that pupils in London are given an unfair advantage in terms of opportunity and funding, which inevitability impacts their academic success.
One third of London’s GCSE students achieved the highest proportion of top grades (a 7 or above, equivalent to an A* or A grade under the old system). This is 10.2 percentage points higher than the two worst-performing regions – the North-East and Yorkshire and the Humber (22.4 per cent).
Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, addressed the disadvantage facing Northern youngsters due to the “failings of the current government”.
“Sadly, this is not all that surprising when we consider the triple whammy of factors that will have had an impact on this attainment gap,” explained Murison, listing these factors as “existing long-term disadvantage, learning loss during Covid and DfE failures in catch up and the national tutoring programme.”
Financial Times economics editor Chris Giles also accused private schools of “fiddling” GCSE results, stating that they were “masters” of the “art” of self-grading during the pandemic years.
Exam grade fiddling GCSE edition
Private schools were masters of this particular art when they graded themselves
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) August 25, 2022
Featured image courtesy of Thomas Tallis School on Flickr. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here.
evedaviess
Eve is 22 years old and lives in Swansea. She has recently graduated from Cardiff University with a BA in English Literature. Eve's main interest is in lifestyle writing, particularly health, food, and travel.