Posted on 24th August 2012

GCSE results: the statistics

Firstly, congratulations from all of us at Enjoy Education to students who received their GCSE results this week. We hope you got what you were hoping for and that all the hard work paid off.

We’ve already reported on the biggest issue that has arisen from this year’s results (click here for our main blog on the GCSEs this year), but here is a brief round up of this year’s statistics…

658,000 students sat GCSE exams this year.

The proportion of students who received a C grade or above has fallen for the first time since the GCSEs were introduced in 1998.

Last year 69.8% of candidates received A*-C grades, compared with 69.4% this year.

Last year 23.2% gained A*s and As, whereas this year the figure dropped to 22.4%.

Grades in English literature have dropped from 78.4% A*-C to 76.3% A*-C.

58.4% of maths grades came in as A*-C.

The percentage of girls getting all A*-C grades was 73.3%, compared to 65.4% of boys.

Even though more boys took individual sciences, girls performed better in physics, chemistry and biology.

Maths remains the most popular subject, and the others in the top ten are: English language, science, English literature, design & technology, religious studies, history, geography and art and design. 

Science and Spanish GCSEs were more popular this year, but the fewer students took German and French.

History, geography and religious studies all continue to grow in popularity, as are languages such as Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Chinese and Italian.

Six-year-old Deborah Thorpe got an E in her maths exam and is thought to be the youngest person to have sat a GCSE (she was five when she took the exam!).

A pupil in Guernsey was awarded 15 A*s this year.