A-level results 2023: top grades fall more steeply in England than other parts of UK – as it happened (2024)

Some initial analysis on the A-level results from our data editor, Pamela Duncan.

As expected, this year’s grades are down on last year’s and a far cry from the pandemic-influenced highs of 2020 and 2021. But, while the exam boards set out to bring grades down to pre-pandemic levels, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to go the whole hog.

The headline figures then are that, across the UK more than a quarter (27.2%) of entries led to an A grade or higher, down by 9.2 percentage points on last year (36.4%) but still higher than in 2019.

The figures for England were slightly lower: 26.5% of entries resulted in an A grade or A* this year compared with more than a third of last year’s cohort (and down from a whopping 44.3% in 2021). But again, this was higher than in 2019 (25.2%).

Outside the top grades, the powers-that-be exhibited more steel: 75.4% of test papers led to a grade of C or above, ever so slightly lower than the last pre-pandemic entries (75.5%).

What we didn’t see coming was a sharp increase in E grades (the lowest pass grade) and in incomplete entries, which made up 10% of England entries this year, the first time that the combined figure has exceeded one-in-10 students, at least by the Guardian’s record, which starts in 2010.

The number of students accepted on to UK degree courses has fallen this year, Ucas figures show.

PA Media reports:

A total of 414,940 applicants (of all ages and domiciles) have gained a place at university or college – down 2.6% on the same point last year, according to data published by the university admissions service. For 18-year-olds in the UK, 230,600 applicants have been accepted – down 3.1% on last year.

Overall, 19,010 UK 18-year-old applicants have missed the conditions of their university offer and are now eligible to find places in clearing, compared to 15,090 last year and 17,270 in 2019.

Ucas said 79% of 18-year-old applicants from the UK have gained a place at their first choice university or college, which is down from 81% last year but up from 74% in 2019 - the year before the pandemic. Nearly one in ten (9%) have not been placed at their first or insurance choice and are now in clearing, Ucas said, compared with 7% last year and 12% in 2019.

The number of 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds in the UK to gain places on courses is 25,760 this year, compared with 26,440 last year.
The number of 18-year-olds from the most advantaged backgrounds in the UK to be accepted is 76,780, compared witho 79,650 in 2022. The admissions service said this means that for every disadvantaged student, 2.30 advantaged students progress compared with 2.29 last year.

Overall, 51,210 international students (all ages, all domiciles) have been accepted – down 2.3% on last year. The top three countries with placed applicants are China, India and Hong Kong.

Clare Marchant, Ucas chief executive, said:

Firstly, I want to say a huge congratulations to the hundreds of thousands of students up and down the country who are celebrating their results and next steps today.

I am delighted to see more than 200,000 UK 18-year-olds have secured their first choice, which is testament to their hard work and commitment to progress to higher education in a year that has seen many complex factors at play, such as geopolitics, the economy and job market, and cost of living.

However, today’s data shows that challenges in widening participation to the most disadvantaged students still persist. This demonstrates that we all need to continue the efforts to ensure the most disadvantaged individuals in society are able to benefit from life-changing opportunities in higher education and training, particularly as the 18-year-old population grows.

For anyone who may not have got the results they were hoping for, or for those applicants who want to change their mind, there is plenty of choice in clearing with nearly 29,000 courses and 8,000 apprenticeships currently available.

We also have a team of advisers hard at work to provide students with expert information, advice and guidance on the phones, social media, and on ucas.com.

Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s education secretary, has also given her congratulations to all students receiving their results today.

She said:

Labour recognises the enormous effort that all of our young people have put into their studies over the past year.

Young people have achieved these results despite the challenges they’ve faced: with a Labour government behind them, offering them pathways to good prospects, there will be no limit on what they can achieve.

Under Labour, your background will be no barrier to you getting on: we will shatter the class ceiling in Britain that holds young people back and spread opportunity across our country.

Sky News have posted this helpful round up of the UCAS statistics

The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has congratulated this year’s A-levels cohort, saying they had “a lot to deal with” and had shown “incredible resilience”.

Keegan also said the latest Ucas figures showed the UK government was “right to put the grading system back to normal”.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

We’ve just had the Ucas figures out … which is that 79% of those students receiving their results today got their first choice of university. And that is up from 74% in 2019.

And the great news is that 16,500 students on free school meals gained a place at university, which is a 60% increase from 2019 and 14% up from last year.

So in terms of destinations, this cohort has done incredibly well and most of them – 79% – have actually got their first choice of university. So hopefully that will lead everybody to understand that we were right to put the grading system back to normal.

The university admissions officers know how to deal with these differences, they know how to deal with the difference from previous cohorts and they also know how to deal with differences between the English system and the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish.

Here we go, students all over the shop getting their A-level results. The pictures are arriving but get in touch with your stories!

Ah, here we go – I knew he wouldn’t disappoint. Adrenaline-junkie TV presenter turned zen-like farmer Jeremy Clarkson has posted his yearly encouragement to those who don’t get the results they want.

Here are some other classics of the genre.

It all started back in 2014, when Clarkson boasted that getting a C and 2 Us hadn’t stopped him getting a Mercedes Benz.

The following year he noted:

And it goes on … year … after year … after year. In 2021 Clarkson was criticised for suggesting that teachers were “giving grades” to students who had been forced to work on their own at home for much of the academic year.

Last year saw a return to simple bragging:

Great encouragement Jeremy!

(Just leaving this tweet from the Politics Home editor, Alan White, here, without comment)

If you are concerned about missing your grades today - don’t miss this moving and thoughtful piece from Dorothy Dunn, who didn’t get the grades she needed a decade ago.

She writes:

If you open that envelope today and realise you haven’t got your first choice of university, don’t make the same mistake I did. Clearing can be brilliant – lots of people find courses on there that are perfect for them. But take the time you need to work out if that’s actually the case, or whether you feel pressured to opt for something just to escape a sense of failure that you shouldn’t have to feel in the first place.

Many students in England opening their A-level results on Thursday morning should be braced for disappointment, writes my colleague Richard Adams – especially as many will be those who enjoyed a bumper set of GCSE results two years ago.

Our education editor writes:

The bulk of this year’s school-leavers receiving their results are those whose GCSE grades were awarded by teacher assessment after exams were cancelled in 2021, with a record-breaking 30% of those entries receiving top 7s, 8s and 9s grades, equivalent to As and A*s.

The higher GCSE grades meant a bigger proportion of students qualifying to take A-levels in more subjects.

But the more generous grading of two years ago has been replaced by a policy of returning grades to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, meaning a steep fall in the proportion of top grades awarded compared with the last three years.

He adds:

In 2021, 44.3% of A-level entries in England received As or A*s, while those who sat A-level exams last year saw 36.4% of entries awarded the top grades. By contrast, in 2019 just 25.8% received As or A*s.

Some forecasters have predicted that up to 50,000 students are likely to miss out on the top grades that they would have achieved had they taken their A-levels last year rather than this spring.

A-level results will also be published in Wales and Northern Ireland, where regulators have taken a more lenient approach. Qualification Wales said exams would be graded more generously to reflect the “long-term impact” of the pandemic, with a return to pre-pandemic levels next year.

Read the full story here:

Hello and welcome one and all to the Guardian’s A-level results live blog, where we will be keeping you up to date on all the trends from across the UK as well as sharing stories from our young people. Our incredible team of education reporters and data specialists will be feeding into this blog, but please do get in touch if you think there are stories we have missed.

There will be tales of exceptional achievements, of triumph over adversity, inevitably, plenty of photos of young people holding sheets of paper and jumping in the air. And we want to hear from you too!

If you are expecting your results today – how did it go? Did you get what you wanted? Parents and loved ones – this is your opportunity to boast, or commiserate, please do get in touch.

You can comment below the line, email me on alexandra.topping@theguardian.com or on Twitter I am @lexytopping.