Girls gain two thirds of the new top marks
GIRLS were ahead of boys in the tougher GCSEs as they secured nearly two thirds of the new highest ‘9’ grades yesterday.
A total of 50,000 entries in the reformed maths, English literature and English language qualifications achieved the top mark – with 29,600 of these from female candidates.
Across all subjects, the proportion of entries achieving at least an A grade has dropped to its lowest proportion in a decade following efforts to halt grade inflation.
The three updated subjects have been made more challenging and are graded from 9 to 1 instead of A* to G under reforms introduced by former education secretary Michael Gove.
Only around 2,000 pupils achieved a grade 9 in all three of the new GCSEs – 0.4 per cent of the roughly 535,000 students who took these subjects.
This is less than a third of the 6,500 pupils who achieved a clean sweep of A* grades in these subjects last year – around 1.1 per cent of the total entries.
The new grade 9 is designed to
‘Narrow the gap’
identify exceptional performance and has been given to those who would have achieved a high A* under the previous system.
It means Oxford and Cambridge universities will find it a lot easier to distinguish who the true top performers are – although they have not yet indicated how much weight they will give to the 9 grade.
The new GCSEs are being phased in slowly on a year-by-year basis, with most courses still assessed under the old A*- G grading scale this year.
John Blake, head of education at the think-tank Policy Exchange, said: ‘We needed these reforms to increase the amount of content being studied and make the qualifications more demanding.
‘ The increased differentiation amongst high performing students with the new 9 grade will be helpful for universities to pick out the most able students.’
In the new reformed subjects, girls were ahead in gaining grade 9s overall – but when the figures are broken down by subject girls were actually outperforming their male counterparts only in the two English qualifications.
One expert said comparisons with last year indicate that the new GCSEs, which include end- ofcourse assessment rather than exams throughout, are in fact benefiting boys.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said he calculated that the proportion of 16-year- old boys in England scoring a 7 or higher – an A* or A under the old grading system – in English language had fallen by 0.5 percentage points to 11.4 per cent compared with last year, while girls had seen a one-point fall to 22.3 per cent.
It means that while girls were still ahead, boys narrowed the gap by 0.5 percentage points.
In maths, the proportion of boys scoring 7 or above rose one point to 20.6 per cent, while girls saw a drop from 19.9 per cent achieving at least an A grade last year to 19.3 per cent gaining at least a 7 this year. Boys have therefore jumped ahead, and now have a 1.3 percentage point lead over girls in the subject, after being 0.3 percentage points behind last year.
Professor Smithers said: ‘It does look as though the move to end-ofcourse exams has enabled the boys to narrow the gap at this level for English and move ahead in maths.
‘The impression of girls racing ahead is because the overall figures include two English exams, subjects in which girls have had their biggest leads over boys.’
The new GCSEs focus on end-ofcourse exams rather than coursework or assessments at the end of each module.
Experts have previously suggested that on average girls tend to respond better to modular courses, as they can apply themselves more consistently throughout the course, whereas boys are more likely to revise intensely in the weeks before a final exam.