Pupils in England who were thought to have been among the worst affected by Covid have bounced back in their GCSE results, with more achieving top grades despite the disruption of the pandemic.
Fears had been raised that this cohort would be severely affected by having key stage 2 tests cancelled in the final year of primary school, when the pandemic hit in 2020, disrupting their transition to secondary school.
However, the results published on Thursday showed 23% of entries for English 16-year-olds were awarded grades 7 or above, up from 22.6% last year, with boys improving their performance, though a higher proportion of girls continue to achieve top grades overall.
In the key compulsory subjects of maths and English there were less encouraging signs, with the percentage of 16-year-old pupils achieving at least a grade 4 in English falling from 71.2% last year to 70.6%. In maths there was a slight decline, from 72% last year to 71.9% achieving grade 4 or better.
Government policy in England means that teenagers who fail to gain at last a grade 4 “standard pass” must undertake resits while they remain in formal education. But this year’s results revealed that fewer of those resitting were reaching grade 4 after multiple attempts, leading critics of the policy to label it a “crisis” that is damaging young people.
For pupils in Northern Ireland, the proportion getting A and A* – equivalent to grades 7 and above in England – rose by a full percentage point to 31.4%, while the proportion getting grades C or above went up to 63.8%.
In Wales, where letter grades are also still used, pupils getting the top grades rose to 20.1%, up from 19.8% in 2024, and those getting a C or better edged up by 0.3 percentage points to 63.8% this year.
Jill Duffy, the chair of the Joint Council for Qualifications board of directors and chief executive of the OCR exam board, paid tribute to pupils’ resilience: “Looking at these results, it is hard not to be impressed by students’ breadth of skills and knowledge.”
The narrative of boys closing the attainment gap with girls, seen in A-level results last week, was also apparent in the GCSE results. Boys showed improved performances in some of the major subjects, while girls slipped backwards in their traditionally strong subjects such as English.
The results mean that the gender gap in favour of girls is now the smallest since separate data for 16-year-olds in England was first published in 2016.
In maths, 23.1% of entries from year 11 boys got grades 7 and above, a rise of 0.6 percentage points on last year, while girls slipped to 19.9%, widening the gap in top grades. In English the proportion of top grades awarded to girls slipped to 23.5% but boys improved by more than a full percentage point compared with 2024, from 14.5% to 15.6%.
But the biggest sign that girls may have been most affected by Covid-era disruption was in the overall grade 4 and above awarded for English, which dropped from 77.1% to 75.9%, while the 9-4 grades for boys ticked up to 65.5%. The proportion of girls who got a standard pass of 4 or better in maths also dropped, from 71.8% in 2024 to 71% this year.
On the gender gap, Duffy said: “Since 2019, the gap between boys and girls in England achieving the top grade has shrunk by 1.5 percentage points, and at grade 4 by almost three percentage points. At grade 7 and above, boys are still five percentage points behind girls.”
Regional inequalities in England, highlighted in the A-level results last week, are also evident in this year’s GCSE results, with the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing regions at grade 7 now at more than 10 percentage points.
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London is four percentage points above any other region, but the capital saw the biggest drop in performance at grade 4. There was good news in the north-east, which had the biggest improvement at this grade compared with 2019 pre-pandemic figures.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary for England, said she was “absolutely determined” to reduce the attainment gaps between regions.
Phillipson said: “Behind every grade lies hours of dedication, resilience and determination, and both students and teachers should feel an immense sense of pride in what they’ve achieved today.
“But while results today are stable, once again we are seeing unacceptable gaps for young people in different parts of the country. Where a young person grows up should not determine what they go on to achieve.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Disadvantaged students were often those most severely affected by the disruption of Covid and that has made it even more difficult to close gaps in educational attainment caused by socioeconomic factors.
“Those gaps are reflected in regional disparities evident once again in this year’s results. We simply must do more to invest – educationally, economically, and socially – in communities suffering from generational disadvantage.”
Sir Ian Bauckham, the chief regulator at Ofqual, England’s qualifications watchdog, said: “Schools, colleges and employers can trust these results when making decisions that will shape these young people’s futures, while students can be confident that their achievements will open doors to educational and career opportunities.”
More than 360,500 level 1 and 2 vocational and technical qualification (VTQ) results have also been awarded to pupils.
