Students entered for A-Levels and AS-Levels this year have just received their results, and national figures published.

It’s worth saying that these are the results before any appeals. We’ll learn more next week about how mock results can be used in appeals following the government’s extraordinary intervention on Tuesday night.

With that caveat in place, what do the results show?

Results are up overall

Looking across all A-Level subjects, the percentage of entries in England awarded an A or above has increased to 27.6% from 25.2% last year.^[1]

At grade C or above, there was an increase from 75.5% to 78.0%.

This comes after the exams regulator, Ofqual, announced that it would permit a small rise in results in these extraordinary times, in which it all public exams were cancelled

It’s worth pointing out that choosing a different comparator makes the difference appear smaller.

At grade A or above, there was a recent high of 26.2% in 2017 and 2018, while at grade C or above, the figure stood at 77.5% in 2016. Compared to those figures, today’s results are 1.4 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points higher respectively, versus the 2.4 percentage points and 2.5 percentage point increases we get if we compare to 2019.

And, a point that Ofqual itself has made, the figures that have come out on previous A-Level results days, and which are our comparator here, are provisional figures, before marking reviews are carried out. The figures released today were intended to be final figures, and as such are a little different from the figures that we’re using as comparators.

Results in some subjects are up by large amounts

The headline change in results masks enormous variation between individual subjects, however.

There are some subjects where results have changed by relatively little. The share of pupils getting an A or above in English language, for example, only increased from 11.3% last year to 11.4% this year. The percentage getting a C or above actually fell, from 78.9% to 76.9% – though we think that might be explained by changing entry patterns.

But in French, for example, the share of pupils getting an A or above increased to nearly a half – 46.0% – from 36.4% last year. At grade C or above, there was an increase from 85.2% to 89.6%.

The chart below the magnitude of the change across a range of subject.

We predicted on Monday that subjects typically entered by small cohorts from any particular school or college would see bigger increases in results. That’s because Ofqual decided that teachers’ proposed grades – which came in high compared to historic results – would be given greater precedence where there were small numbers of entrants.

And that seems to be borne out in the results this morning. To pick a handful of the subjects that we highlighted on Monday, grades at A or above increased from 40.4% last year to 53.7% in German, from 19.3% to 35.8% in music, and from 15.9% to 26.6% in design and technology.

You can use the chart below to explore the full mix of grades awarded in all subject reported on.

All subjectsArt and design subjectsBiologyBusiness studiesChemistryClassical subjectsComputingDesign and technologyDramaEconomicsEnglish languageEnglish language and literatureEnglish literatureFrenchFurther mathematicsGeographyGermanHistoryLawMathematicsMedia/film/TV studiesMusicPhysical educationPhysicsPolitical studiesPsychologyReligious studiesSociologySpanishOther modern languagesOther sciences

Entry numbers are down sharply in some high profile subjects

While changes in results will snatch most of the attention today, there are a few entry number trends that it’s worth flagging.

Entries are up in English language and English literature, by +7.1% and +2.1% respectively. They’re also up in maths (+2.6%).

Meanwhile, entry numbers fell in biology and chemistry (-6.5% and -5.5% respectively). They also dipped by -2.8% in physics, but the age 18 population in England is roughly 3% smaller this year than last, so in reality we’d say they haven’t changed by much in physics.^[2] Computing recorded a large increase, of +11.9%.

Several other subjects recorded large drops in entry, though: -13.3% in history; -14.0% in geography; and -11.1% in politics. However, entry numbers in history and geography have been historically volatile.

Entries were also down in German (-7.0%), broadly stable in French (-0.7%, but again, against a backdrop of a smaller 18-year-old population), and up in Spanish (+1.3%).

Entries into other modern foreign languages, which includes things like Arabic, Chinese and Russian, were also down by a staggering amount – -40.7% – following a large drop in 2019 too. In part we think that’s due to native language-speaking students not being assessed this summer, but we think there’d have been a sizeable drop even if it weren’t for that.

Entry trends in all A-Level subjects can be explored on our results microsite.

Digging deeper

So, all in all, it’s a year of massive change.

What we haven’t yet seen, however, are the results for individual schools, colleges or, more importantly, students.

The government has committed to not publishing any performance tables this year, but it would be desirable for an independent third party to check over how this year’s results compare to previous years’ in each subject at each centre. A number of centres have told us that their 2020 results are lower than any achieved in the last three years.^[3] Reassurances that standards have been maintained nationally are worthless if some centres have been more affected than others.

We also wonder to what extent this year’s arrangements have increased the variability in students’ results. Normally, we would expect the results of most students taking at least three A-Levels – something like 60% – to differ by no more than one grade.

We don’t know whether that has been maintained in this year’s results. At briefings on the results this morning, Ofqual notably was unable to even answer how many students have had their results adjusted down one/two/three subjects. (Update, 10.30AM: documents Ofqual has published give figures on the number of grades that have been adjusted: see table 9.8 here.)

We’ll be back with more analysis throughout the day. Make sure you don’t miss out on the rest of our results coverage – sign up here to receive our blogposts by email.