The GCSE pass rate for English and maths has hit its lowest level in a decade. The Telegraph has more.
Just 58.3% of all pupils across the UK passed their maths GCSE this year, down from 59.5% last year to reach the lowest level since 2013.
Meanwhile, the pass rate for English dropped 1.7 percentage points to hit 60.2% this summer, matching a previous low for the subject in 2016 and marking the worst result since 2004.
It comes after Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, warned that failure to ensure children leave school with solid English and maths skills was holding Britain back.
She told the Telegraph on Wednesday that the pass rate for the two GCSE subjects was particularly low among white working-class children and claimed that this was having a knock-on effect on UK productivity.
Today’s results means two in five pupils are now failing the two compulsory GCSE subjects, despite most jobs requiring applicants to prove that they passed them.
Falls in both subjects were driven by a surge in the number of children retaking them and failing aged 17 or over, since pupils that fail are required to resit them if they stay on for sixth form.
The proportion of top GCSEs grades remained broadly stable this summer compared to 2024, although still above pre-pandemic levels.
The attainment gap between boys and girls also fell to its lowest on record, with boys improving slightly compared to last year to receive 19.4% of top grades and girls falling marginally to take 24.5%.
Overall, 21.9% of GCSE entries across the UK were awarded a grade 7 or above this year – equivalent to an A in the former grading system.
This was up by 0.1 percentage points compared to 2024 – meaning an increase of just 2,000 entries awarded top grades this year – but higher than the 2019 rate of 20.8%.
Last week’s bumper A-level results prompted accusations that grade inflation may have become baked into the system following the pandemic. Ofqual, the exams regulator, insisted that record top A-level grades this year were because of a “smarter, smaller” cohort.
Alphabetic grades for GCSEs were replaced with a numerical scale in 2017 as a way of clamping down on creeping grade inflation and distinguishing the very brightest pupils.
The new grading system ranges from the lowest grade 1 to the highest level of grade 9, with grade 7 counting as an A, grade 8 a low A* and grade 9 equivalent to a high A*.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: As usual, the Michaela Community School got outstanding GCSE results, with 80% of its students being graded 7-9 (A/A* in old money) and 100% getting grade 4 or above (C or above) in Maths and English. The West London Free School also did well, with 63% of students getting 7-9 and 90% grade 4 or above in Maths and English. The Mail has run a tribute to Katharine Birbalsingh and Michaela here.
See Related Article Below
The white working class is a timebomb ready to explode
Plummeting GCSE results among Britain’s poorest pupils spells disaster for all of us
Stop press. Hold the front page. White working class kids are being let down by the British state admits Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary. Who knew? Apart from everybody.
Previous incumbents of the post, and there’ve been quite a few, have said pretty much the same thing since 1996. What was that? You’re wondering exactly how many education secretaries that might be?
Eighteen. We have had 18 over the past 30 years with an average tenure of just a year and a half – although, in fairness, Michelle Donelan only managed 48 hours in July 2022 and Kit Malthouse was gone after a month the same year, so they probably never got round to the annual mea culpa on GCSE results day, which felicitously happens to be today.
In 2024, just 19 per cent of white working class pupils gained a strong pass in maths and English GCSE. When the numbers are crunched, this year doesn’t promise to be any different. Small wonder nothing substantive has been achieved by a Cinderella education department that has experienced more churn than a Kerrygold creamery.
You don’t have to be any sort of expert to conclude Britain’s young people deserve better. Britain’s taxpayers deserve better. Britain’s tanking economy deserves better. Yet successive governments of every hue have signally failed to tackle the scandalous inequality at the heart of our education system.
Low motivation and self-esteem
At the risk of coming over all Dowager Duchess, I’m not entirely certain how “working class” is defined when plumbers earn more than academics and can sleep a lot easier too, knowing AI won’t take their job. But I think, on balance, we can safely accept self-identification in this regard.
What is uncontested is that the current status quo militates against children who are already socially deprived and for whom the groves of academe are simply not an option. They might thrive in another, more hands-on learning environment. But, as the obsession with university degrees continues unabated, the non-academic are left to fall by the wayside.
Low educational attainment feeds into low motivation, fuelling low self-esteem. I’ve seen it for myself in the first part of the year when I travelled round the country visiting the places politicians fear to tread.
In Grimsby, I found a once-proud fishing port now a bleak, de-skilled black spot, where generational worklessness has earned one ward, East March, the unenviable title of the area of Britain with the highest rate of youth unemployment.
In Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, south Wales, the constituency with the highest proportion of people claiming benefits for anxiety in Britain, I witnessed first hand how an absence of optimism, ambition, call it what you will, erodes community cohesion, resulting in decline and petty crime.
The metropolitan chattering classes
Without the spur of moving onwards and upwards, however that looks, stagnation and disaffection set in. Take it from me; there is something genuinely affecting and deeply dispiriting about hearing teenagers sound hopeless about the future when their adult lives have barely begun.
When government ministers talk about “working people”, “strivers not skivers” and “alarm-clock Britain” they are invariably envisioning a smiling family from the McCain ad, not real people feeling angry…
The Telegraph: continue reading
Featured image: The Daily Sceptic
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