Post-16 education is in a period of flux, with major qualification reforms and a drop in per-student spending. Reformed A-Levels began to be introduced from September 2015, with a concurrent decoupling of AS-Levels. And, as the IFS have reported [PDF], spending per student in school sixth forms and further education has been falling since 2010/11. [...]
Aficionados of DfE Statistical First Releases (SFRs) were shocked to their very core a couple of weeks ago with the revelation that the percentage of 19-year-olds qualified to Level 2 had fallen for the first time since records began. In the real world this equates to young people achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C [...]
New analysis This post was published in 2017. We've subsequently looked at the equivalence of A-Levels and reformed BTECs. Read our updated analysis here. * Updated 3rd April 2017 following helpful feedback from UCAS* Last week, the Higher Education Policy Institute published a report on BTECs and university admissions [PDF]. It recognised that [...]
This morning the Social Mobility Commission published our research examining the choice of courses and institution made by students at age 16. We could see there were differences in the choices made by social background, ethnicity and gender of the student and wanted to measure the extent to which these arose through differences in: GCSE [...]
Alongside the publication this morning of data covering EBacc entries and Attainment 8/Progress 8, a statistical first release (SFR) has been published on the destinations of the 2014/15 Key Stage 4 cohort. This shows that 91 per cent were in a “sustained education destination” during the first two terms of 2015/16, and 94 per cent [...]
At a headline level, results have fallen this year A*-A results were down from 22.3 per cent of all results last year, to 21.7 per cent of all results this year. On the headline A*-C measure, results were down from 70.8 per cent to 69.5 per cent. (Figures given here and in the rest of [...]
Today will not be a happy occasion for the typical 17 year old re-taking GCSE maths and/or English. The government now requires them to continue studying these subjects if they did not achieve a grade C at age 16 and many are entered for these qualifications again after just a year of additional study. For [...]
This year’s AS-Level results include the first set of decoupled subjects, which won't count towards English students' final A-Level grades next year. Declines in UK entry numbers in the decoupled subjects range from 11% (business studies) to 33% (art and design). Why not enter for AS-Level? Examination fees cost money, and schools’ post-16 budgets are already stretched from funding reforms which have [...]
A-Level examination sittings, which stretch from mid-May through to the end of June, often overlap with an international football tournament. Unfortunately, football lovers, who are more likely to be boys than girls, can find this a distraction from their revision schedule. Economists at the University of Bristol have noticed how this has damaged English boys [...]
