Students in England opening their A-level results on Thursday morning should be braced for disappointment – especially as many will be those who enjoyed a bumper set of GCSE results two years ago.
The bulk of this year’s school-leavers receiving their results are those whose GCSE grades were awarded by teacher assessment after exams were cancelled in 2021, with a record-breaking 30% of those entries receiving top 7s, 8s and 9s grades, equivalent to As and A*s.
The higher GCSE grades meant a bigger proportion of students qualifying to take A-levels in more subjects.
But the more generous grading of two years ago has been replaced by a policy of returning grades to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, meaning a steep fall in the proportion of top grades awarded compared with the last three years.
Headteachers who spoke to the Guardian said they feared there would be “tears for a few students” who might have been expecting better results.
Experts at the FFT Datalab education consultancy said the rollercoaster ride of pandemic-era GCSE grades and pre-pandemic A-levels could disproportionately affect disadvantaged students who in previous years would not have sat A-levels but were encouraged to do so this year.
“We don’t have the figures yet but these unusual circumstances might well mean that a higher proportion of disadvantaged pupils went on to enter A-levels this year than in a typical year,” Natasha Plaister, a statistician at FFT Datalab, said.
