School leavers in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man will also receive their results today
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.
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.
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.
