Resits are blamed for the worst GCSEs since 2008
GCSE grades have seen the biggest drop in history following government reforms aimed at boosting literacy and numeracy in youngsters.
As thousands of 16-year-olds collected their results yesterday, it emerged the proportion of entries graded at A* to C has fallen by 2.1 percentage points – the largest dip since the exams were created in 1988 and the lowest since 2008.
But Northern Ireland, which still has a grammar school system, outperformed the rest of the UK for the 15th year running, prompting calls for England to re-introduce selective state schools.
Overall, only 66.9 per cent of papers in Britain got A* to C, the lowest figure in eight years. There was also a fall in the proportion receiving top A* and A grades, from 21 per cent to 20.3 per cent.
Experts said the drop was partly due to a record number of pupils resitting exams and an increase in those studying tough subjects.
School standards minister Nick Gibb said: ‘I am pleased to see that there are more GCSEs being taken in the core academic subjects, those that give students a wider range of opportunities.’ He added that teenagers who had successfully retaken these GCSEs now had ‘better prospects’.
Under reforms in 2013, pupils who do not achieve a C in GCSE maths or English must retake them when they are 17 or 18. This year, resits for the two subjects increased by
‘Not in the best interests of students’
about a third – with 128,201 retaking English and 173,628 retaking maths.
Only around a third of re-sitters pass the second time, pulling down the average.
However, even without these older pupils resitting exams, there has been a fall in the results of 16-year-olds, with the proportion getting A* to C declining by 1.3 percentage points. Exam board data released yesterday also revealed entry for the core subjects of the Ebacc has risen – and this has resulted in lower grades for some.
The Government now judges schools on the Ebacc – a suite of five GCSEs including maths, English, history or geography, the sciences and a language.
Entries for geography increased by 7 per cent to 244,033, while entries for history rose by 5.5 per cent to 260,521. However, A* to C grades dropped in both subjects by about 3 percentage points, and A* grades dropped by almost 1 per cent.
Experts said that the changes in those results were probably down to less able students entering for these tougher subjects and scoring lower than they would have done in easier subjects.
Jill Stokoe, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: ‘The Government must acknowledge that their policy to force 17-yearolds to re-take English and Maths until they obtain a pass grade is not in the best interests of students, and is clearly not working.’
Meanwhile, grammar schools have been given a boost after A* to C grades in Northern Ireland increased by 0.4 per cent to 79.1 per cent – compared with 66.9 per cent in the rest of the UK. In England, only 66.6 per cent of entries achieved these grades.
Northern Ireland still has the 11plus exam for its 69 grammar schools – which serve a population of just 1.8 million. In contrast, England has just 163 selective schools for its population of 53 million. Prime Minister Theresa May is examining whether to overturn a historic ban to allow new grammar schools to be created in England.
Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘Northern Ireland has always been considerably ahead of England in GCSEs. This has received much less attention than it deserves because the educational establishment are unwilling to contemplate that it might have anything to do with the grammar school system. But what else could it be?’