We reflect on what we have learned from this year’s GCSE and A Level results day, and what the data might tell us about educational inequality and its impact on university access.
For school students across the UK, the words ‘results day’ evoke a mix of excitement, dread, and anxiety. It is also an incredibly busy time, with university clearing lines buzzing with activity, and young people having to navigate the pressure of making quick and potentially lifechanging decisions about their future paths.
This year’s cohort is unique: the students sitting their A Levels were in Year 9 in 2020—by the time they finally sat their first GCSE exams in Year 10, educational practices and examinations had been reshaped by the pandemic, with the government turning to centre-assessed grades. Similarly, this year’s GCSE students have navigated most of their secondary school journey in a post-pandemic world.
The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, praised this year’s A Level students for their ‘enormous resilience in the face of lots of disruption’. But she also spoke about the ‘baked in inequalities’ that are very clear from this year’s results, and that are likely to have an impact on educational outcomes for young people in the years to come.
Here are our five key learnings from GCSE and A Level Results Day:
1. A return to pre-pandemic pass rates
For both A Level and GCSE results this year, we’ve seen small rises in top grades, and small dips in pass rates. But the movement, here, is very small and it is difficult to assume an upward or downward trend in grades.
However, we can say that we are now firmly back to pre-pandemic levels: for both GCSEs and A Levels, the pass rate across England, Wales and Northern Ireland has fallen for a third year running, returning to levels last seen in 2019 – which was the last year exams were sat before Covid.
In 2024, 67.4 per cent of GCSE entries were awarded a grade 4 or above (equivalent to a C). This is only slightly lower than last year’s figure of 67.8. For A Levels, the proportion of A* and A grades has risen slightly to 27.6 per cent, up from 26.5 per cent last year, a rise of 4.2 per cent. GCSE top grades show a similar trend: the grade 5 pass rate has risen slightly from 54.4% to 54.6%.
2. Regional disparities are persisting
Now that grades have returned to 2019 levels, we are starting to get a more detailed picture of how educational inequality has changed over the last five years.
We can see, for example, that regional gaps in educational attainment are persisting, and we are still seeing a gulf between the North and South of England. GCSE results show that the gap between southern regions and other English regions is wider than it was before the pandemic. Four out of five regions in the North and the Midlands have a lower pass rate this year than they did in 2019, whereas every region in the South has a higher pass rate.
A Level results tell a slightly different story: though the proportion of top grades increased across every region in England, there is still a large gap between the highest performing regions (London and the South East) and the lowest performing regions (the North East and the East Midlands).
3. A different picture in each nation of the UK
While we saw little change in GCSE and A Level Results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland fared a little worse. GCSE pass rates in Northern Ireland fell by over 4%, and in Wales by almost 3%..
4. Deepening inequality between private and state schools
This year saw the gap widen between private and state school students for both GCSE and A Level results. Independent schools and grammar schools had the highest proportion of A Level top grades – 49.4% and 41% respectively. This compares to 26.5% in academies, 22.3% in comprehensive schools, and just 14.8% in FE colleges. Sutton Trust analysis shows a similar pattern for GCSE grades, where 48.4% of grades were at A/7 higher, which compares to 21.2% at academies and 19.4% at comprehensive schools.
5. More less advantaged students proceeding to university study.
According to UCAS, 22,640 18-year-old applicants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (TUNDRA quintile 1) have gained a place at university – the highest on record.
But this headline – though, on the surface, positive – might also tell us about how the demographics of 18-year-olds have changed since 2019. We have seen poverty levels rise dramatically over the last few years in England, with 24.6% of students now eligible for free school meals, compared to 15.4% in 2019.
The number of less advantaged students gaining a place at a university has also decreased in Wales and Northern Ireland, with the number accepted to higher education slightly down on 2023 rates.
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From this data, we can see how important it is that the sector continues to invest in widening participation programmes, and particularly ones that work across all UK regions. Though the A Level and GCSE results this year paint a picture of worsening educational inequality, we also know that universities are only going to get busier, with a million applicants predicted by 2030. As more and more students arrive on campus over the next five years, we need to make sure that less advantaged students are still getting a fair chance at progressing to higher education.
Our own university access programme, The Scholars Programme, provides students across the UK aged 8-18 with the experience of university-style learning in the classroom. For the less advantaged students we work with, this establishes university study as a viable and achievable option and is proven to improve GCSE attainment, as well as increase applications and progression to competitive universities.
Supporting them to make the transition from school to their next step is vital, particularly for students from less advantaged backgrounds who are more likely to drop out before their second year and less likely to graduate with a 1st or 2:1 in their degree.
We support students to make the transition from school to university through our Join the Dots programme, which builds an essential network of free support for students who are most likely to face barriers during the transition to higher education. The programme connects schools and colleges to a university, works with postgraduate students to provide coaching, and builds communities between students when they arrive on campus. Join the Dots ensures that support does not end when a young person leaves their school on results day.
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This year’s results, following the second year of regular examinations after schools moved away from the teacher- and centre-assessments we saw during the pandemic, are beginning to give us a fuller story of what has happened to educational inequality over the past five years. The trends that we are seeing – namely, deepening regional inequality and the widening gulf between private and state schools – are incredibly concerning. We also know from data released by the Education Policy Institute in July that less advantaged students are now 19.2 months behind their more advantaged peers by the time they take their GCSEs. Now, more than ever, the sector needs to do all we can to ensure young people, regardless of their background or postcode, have equal access to educational opportunity.